The Positives of Gamification and Its Application by Popular Companies

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the application process of gamification in software development and its impact on the Usability and User Experience. Gamification concept emerged in 2008 in the digital media industry but only started trending and got extensively adopted in 2010 (Ribeiro et al., 2014). Gamification can also be defined as “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts” and differentiate it from the concepts of serious games and playful design as Gamification or Gameful design covers parts of a system and with a structured style of play (Deterding et al., n.d.). Game elements are the components that form a game. Classifying game elements is based on inner experience. However, (Seaborn and Fels, 2015) attempted to classify game elements by their level of abstraction into the following:

1. Game interface design patterns like Badge, leaderboard, level,
2. Design patterns and mechanics like Time constraint, limited resources, turns,
3. Design principles and heuristics like Enduring play, clear goals,
4. Game models,
5. Design methods.

Nevertheless, game elements may vary but the most commonly used elements in gamification are Feedback, goals, badges, point system, leaderboard, user levels (Basten, 2017). Gamification isn’t about creating complete games but about enhancing existing processes and activities by implementing the elements and techniques of a game that makes it motivational and engaging. Iit is considered to be a powerful motivational tool that creates real behavior change as gamified systems provide challenges, curiosity, control, fantasy, cooperation, competition and recognition (Kapp, 2012), and that which manages to motivate users doing repetitive tasks, rise users engagement, address stress causes and assist in stress relief, and enhance overall users attitude (Swacha, 2016). Gamification also aids usability, and trust, and encourages social interaction(Basten, 2017). Gamification has been applied in various domains of research including education, online communities and social networks, health, crowdsourcing, sustainability applications that seek to support and encourage sustainable behaviors, orientation, computer science and engineering, research, marketing, computer supported cooperative work (Seaborn and Fels, 2015). Many applications of gamification in different industries proved success. For instance, AstraZeneca succeed in increasing completion rate with gamifying their medicine training, Autodesk amplified trial usage by gamifying their free trial, Microsoft increased user feedback by gamifying their Communicate hope system, and Keas successfully promoted healthy activities among employees. Other companies like Ford and Domino’s Pizza created complete games that hugely increased their sales and revenues as well as customer engagement on social media (satyajit, 2017).