The Theory of Fun: Connecting Our Users Through Gamification.

User engagement is the ultimate goal of our user experience and is crucial for business success. We want users to click, type, swipe, play, buy, and so on. When it comes to a digitally native company like ours, the business’s survival depends on this engagement.

Getting our users to engage requires functionalities that provide both value and fun to the user. For this reason, gamification systems are a key part of user engagement as it helps guide players through a digital interface and encourages them to complete more tasks.

Young players’ engagement with the system is a measure of a user’s interaction with a digital interface presented to them on a website or mobile application. Goals, funnels, calls-to-action, and gamification elements help move the user through the user flow and enhance interactivity.?

Gamification refers to the practice of inserting game elements into a non-game setting, such as points, leaderboards, rewards, and more.

The Heroes of their own stories

In ScoutX, we’ve implemented several systems that highlight progression and reward achievements. Besides a social media-like interface and social communication systems, every player has a status card that resembles the ones in popular games. It displays the player status based on several factors such as coach evaluation or social interactions, giving way to incentives for progression as humans are competitive by nature, especially in our “players” user type age bracket. The “Parents” user base is also heavily affected by that system as it is the closest to the “players” user base in engagement and interaction as they watch their children grow and achieve, driving total user engagement even further.

We’ve also invested in reward systems that go along (and complement) our gamification system, with actual physical prizes and rewards for players that achieved the most, going the extra mile to ignite competition and increase engagement. These solid foundations also open the door to even more business opportunities like events and several monetization channels.?

Finally, gamification is supposed to make our user's experiences fun as people remember the feelings they felt at the peak and at the end of their experiences. In psychology, this is called the peak-end rule. As such, whenever we are building an experience that triggers positive emotions, we’re offering users fun, engaging, and memorable experiences.