Why its important to keep a playfulness and gamification in your Design

I always tell my students to keep a gamification and a playfulness in their design concepts. You know, it's very vital and a lot of people don't understand the importance of keeping it. And this drives the user engagement to an insanely next level. And people come, people keep coming to your products and services again and again for this one particular reason. If you want to know why, if you wanted to know how, if you wanted to know when all these questions are answered when it comes to gamification and playfulness in design, take a lot of notes and let's jump into this podcast. It's very inevitably known to everybody that gaming market is really booming. Like anything, it's not like before, you know what the gaming industry is actually in 2021 it has reached US$175 billion. Okay, it's just a 2001, 2021 statistics, but it's growing each and every year by 9.3 percentage. Particularly the mobile gaming sector is projected to generate a highest revenue, in fact 50% of the global market share compared to any PlayStations and this, that and all. So what does it really imply? People like games. It's as simple as that, right? It's not only kids or maybe adults who play games. It's also many different people play games like old people. And sometimes people are working, people are in staying home, housewife people are united sector people who are in rural sector. So inherently we've been evolved as a human through playing games in our particularly, let's say if it is 50,000 years back or maybe 30,000 years back, people used to wander in terms of groups and in that particular band, people need to really rest upon something and pass their time in order to wait for next day to come because they are not having a proper purpose. Their purpose is to only eat, sleep and reproduce and just survive their enemies. So what happens is there is a surplus amount of time which is left over for the people to really engage in something. So this is where what happened is people started doing some random things and they started playing some, what do you call? It's not games. They started to entertain themselves and they find a little fun in it. You know what, when your body moves in action, when your thinking comes in play, and when a kind of competitiveness happens compared to the other person and you, and when you are also in that particular rhythm, particularly in a team and a group, you set to go in a flow. And people really like that kind of adrenaline rush when it comes to playing that game. So this is a simple science and evolution trait behind it. So how it really propagated much into the deeper culture of the human. There are lots of studies which are substantiated. I visited a museum called National History Museum in Vienna. It was the best museum I've ever visited. I would say it's the one and only top two or three museums in the world which can tell about your evolution in a very deeper way. So in that particular museum, so I've saw that the Africans, particularly with respect to the evolutionary trait I'm talking, okay, so they were the one who were playing lot of games and they were actually engaging that games in into considering that as a survival. Also like let's say if a particular game was played and the team was won, so they used to do some kind of a human sacrifice. Let's say if they lose, they do the opposite side of it. So they tend to have a reward and a punishment system for this. So what happened is this creates a very serious trait in human beings. So you need to understand these basics why we are very excited to play games. Let it comes to Xbox, let it comes to PlayStation, let it comes to mobile games, laptop games, anything guys. It's all about how did we really get this thing stick to our body, right? And what happened is after a long point of time, so people started taking it in a very serious way. And this becomes as a sport. So sport is something which is different, game is something which is different. And. And doing something randomly for a playfulness is something different. Okay, so there are three sectors in it. So what people did is they tried to form this particular as a sport and they kept a milestones for this for the people to achieve it. Okay, so the people who have played and understood and analyzed this game well, they set higher standards and particularly higher levels of cross. Higher levels of people who wanted to cross this line or they wanted to jump this much, they wanted to try and hit this thing then and only they'll be called the winners. And then only they'll be called the most fittest person. So what happens is the competition kept on going. So people don't know what are the benefit. People don't know why they are engaged. So it is like really fun for them. It's like really engaging for them that I would say. And lot of engagement and connection between humans really happened and they started loving it as well. Okay, so you can read a book called Yuval Nova Harari. His author with the book name is Sapiens. You can read that is one book which can simply explain you how the Evolution of human really happened in a more simple way. Okay? If you go and read history, you will get lost, you will never come back. So this is one such book where I got this perspective and when I went to that museum also I tried to connect everything in that and I got a very good perspective of why people are really addicted towards that gaming and why I told you it is US$175.8 billion in just 2021. It's 50 percentage is going to be a market share in mobile. So having said this, we know how it has come, right? So I'll tell you what is the current trend people are in. So a study by Gartner predicted that in 2025, 40% of the total top global thousand companies use gamification to transform their business. It's just two years left already a lot of gamification is there, you know, how can I tell you? You'll be really surprised the moment if I tell. We are already in the world of gamification. So think of any best application, whatever you are using in your current say maybe it could be a musical app, or maybe it could be a payment transaction or maybe it could be Google pay. It could be anything. Okay, think deeply. Why do you really like that app? I'll give you a moment to think about it. It's not about just rushing and hey, this is easy to transact payment. Don't just give this obvious answers. If you are a designer, if you're designing for the people experiences and gamify them, you need to break the psychology behind why it is superb, why it is engaging, why it is beautiful. So what happens is whenever you are opening an application, or whenever you are opening a website, or whenever you are using a product, let's say physical product or anything, what happens is the designers who has really planned this particular activity has made you to take an action in order to achieve a goal. Let's say a goal could be ordering a food. A goal could be ordering a particular product in Amazon or maybe something if you wanted to transact a payment. So what happens is there needs to be a queue which a designer needs to keep. What are the cue to buy that particular product? Right? It needs to be there. So if you see the shopping websites and applications like let's say Amazon or maybe Flipkart or anything, like let's say ebay or anything. So people have a lot of pictures, why people have a lot of videos, why people have a lot of very HD quality zoomed images and some people have even 360 degree images and some people have interactive video images also. Why? It's because it is a cue for you to really trust and believe this product in order to take an action. So when you are able to give that particular cue, then you move into a stage called action. When you are able to take an action, then you will go into loving that product and then you will feel whether it is affordable for us or not. The moment, if you think of affordability, you started liking that product. Simple. This is how the behavioral marketing really works, okay? This is how they make the people come in to purchase a product. Let's say if you are, if you are landing pages, if you're creating, let's say if you're creating a kind of a sales hook or maybe a digital marketing campaign or anything which is related, which is for digital designers, they do so they move the customer step by step, one stage after another, okay? So what they do is they move into a stage of getting connected with the senses and they really feel appealing and they have decided to buy it. So like let's say in that moment if you give a offer, okay, like let's say that product price is actually 1,000 rupees, but you're giving it like a 50 percentage off it for 500 rupees. And what happens is people will really get excited, right? So when people are really getting excited, so what happens is that particular moment is being captured by the designer. The designer exactly knows how it needs to be done. So the next what comes is a kind of graphics, a kind of buttons, a kind of payment gateway page or a kind of product which is displayed or a kind of testimony of that product or kind of any particular important information which is there for you or to really thrust that thing forward because you have decided to buy, the cost is also affordable. And then you got attracted and now you have to make the purchase. So now comes the real gamification thing. Okay, so so far what happened is also a part of a game. Somebody cannot come and give you a game to play, right? You will not like the game like that. You need to watch it. You need to get attracted. And once if you started attracting, then you will try it first, right? If that try is really okay, then you will be excited to take care. If somebody is demotivating, if somebody is not motivating you properly during that game, like let's say that first step, whatever you've taken is not appealing or interesting, what happens, you leave that and then you lift it, right? So you're not going to come into that Game. So the challenge of a designer, the challenge of a designer, particularly product designers and UI UX designers is to make the people engaged in that game of shopping and completing the transaction. So what happens is there is an augmentation of sound, there is an augmentation of graphics, there is augmentation of text, typeface, picture, everything, right? But psychologically what happens this needs to also come in parallel. It's not only the aesthetics, it's about the thought process. So user is really thinking. So he has come to the stage of making the transaction. Now he really doesn't have money. Okay, like let's say he really has money but he is not willing to spend. Now he has something for us to buy. What happens is now the banking sector is really coming into the picture. The transaction method. Okay, so what designer really does is so now we have a very special offer for people who pay in credit card where you get a 50 days credit period to do it. You have a special EMI card where you can do it in 12 split EMIs for this particular product. So what happens now? You are given exactly the right platform under stadium to play your game after you started liking it and then people go and play it. See guys, if this particular steps are not deliberately designed, do you think the transaction and purchase will happen? Imagine 10 years before if you are ever using mobile phones and maybe five years before how does the application really look like? How does the product or the service digitally really does look like? Are we really trusting the online platforms to make a purchase of like let's say TV fridge and everything? Right now people are buying TV fridge, even two wheeler four wheeler in Amazon, right? It's a worth of 8 lakhs 10 lakhs rupees product. How does the stress really happen? Simple guys, it's only because of gamification. People know exactly your cues. People know exactly your triggers. People know exactly when to give engagement. People know when exactly to give you offer. People know how to put you and play this game and move forward. Simple. If you really understand this, you will not be the same person while you design any particular concept next time. So the usage is really high guys. The study by Gartner predicted I told you 40% of the industries top thousand industries use gamification to transform their business. According to elearning industry gamification market in education is to grow by 3.7 billion. Only the education system. I am saying so 2025 it's going to be 3.7 billion. So even a study by Badge Willet found that incorporating gamification into your customer service flow can lead to 20% improvement in employee performance. What is really happening then? It's all because of the psychology. What is really happening when you capture the adrenaline rush of the people. Okay, Jagdish, so you're saying statistics is there, market is there. How do I exactly design this? How do I exactly understand this? This is where you need to be more empathetic. You need to really understand the process in which the customer is really going through a website or an application or something. So market research is very important. Customer journey understanding is very important. And getting to know what game has really worked before. You need to check out the best landing pages, check out the best products in the market, benchmark them, try to understand. See In 2019, a market research future estimated gamification market, consumer goods and retail grow as 30.2 percentage. So consumer goods is really high. So go and understand top five manufacturers or players who are doing consumer goods. So try to understand how their gamification really works. So even the user interface and user experience design, this particular market is going to reach for 11.1 billion guys by 2026. It's expected to grow 25%. Insanely high. So even when people are getting a loading page, like let's say if the Internet is low or something, some game needs to be there, right? Have you seen Google Chrome? You get to see that dinosaur game, right? So people don't want to disengage you or else you will go and switch back to the other browser or else you will lose your interest of going into that website or maybe you will lose the mood of not opening your mobile at all, right? So they want to keep your engagement. So this is very, very, very important, guys. So American Journal of Play published a study showing that gamified learning can increase student engagement by 88 percentage. That's why particularly E learning industry, I'm very keenly focused on telling that if you gamify the concept of the students, their engagement really goes up like 88 percentage. You know what, in my mentorship program, I really gamify the students by putting in the teams and creating them a challenge and making them reach it. Because I know if you give them a concept like hey, go and do user research, go and learn primary, secondary research, go and do empathy mapping, come up with prototype. Nobody will do. Maybe some people will do, but not in that effective manner. The moment if I gamify the moment if I keep a target, the moment if I. Okay, so the moment if you really create that particular engagement I don't want to cut this. I wanted to keep it as natural as possible. So just list a little cough. Okay. So what happens is I keep that in a gamified way. So I keep them teams, I keep them a challenge, I give them a timeline so that in between that resources, in between that particular timeline, what best they can do, they will be able to come up with lot many concepts. So the moment when you put somebody into that particular triangulation, they tend to learn a lot. They tend to allow the journey, they tend to engage more. You will not believe in three weeks we made a work which is worth of three months cover that much of learning students will get. That's why my course completion rate is more than 50 percentage and the attendance of my particular class is 85 to 91 percentage. Even though when I keep in the morning 5:30 to 7 doesn't matter, people come. So a case study by Deloitte found that companies using gamification in their training programs experienced 11% increase in their employees productivity on average. Because games not only make you engaged, it touches your senses, it touches your behavior. You know, there are a lot of neuroscientific studies by Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab shown that gamification elements stimulate a release of dopamine in your brain. Why people get excited, it's because of the chemical reaction. What happens when you play that game? It enhances the motivation. You tend to really stay in that place because you want more dopamine. Dopamine hit should be there for you, right? So people call hey, dopamine hit. This is then they'll stay for a longer time. Even computer mediated communication published research indicating that gamification can positively influence user behavior by tapping into psychological motivators like let's say achievement, recognition, competition. Not in a negative way, in a very positive way. So you need to understand this guys, there are many applications you can go and find. Duolingo, it's a learning for language app particularly it uses a gamification to engage users. The app reported over 3,300 million users worldwide in 2020. I'm saying so some of the successful particular applications are there success of fitness apps like Strava. You know what thousands and thousands of downloads is happening every single day. Their achievements and the gamification and leaderboard what they've created. It will make the user to go and particularly take an action and read it. So it is very vital to go and understand this kind of an element. Guys, lot of people don't understand this. You can open an application called Nike. Nike is a very good brand and Nike run club app and you can open an app called Zombies and seamless English learning. So particularly Nike. You know it integrates a lot of these challenges, leaderboards, motivates and you can see how the gamification really happens. And having understood why evolutionary we are really liking games and why it is very, very relevant now and why it is important to drive the engagement now you have to go and really research out the competitors and then come up with a great idea because I've given you a thought process and an idea and a concepts of how the Doberman hit is happening for creating that engagement with the user education industry, healthcare, corporate customer. Everywhere this particular thing is used guys. Okay, definitely you should know about it a lot. Let me give you some some materials also so that you can deeply read about it. You can read a book called Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Okay, so it explores the habit formation. One of the best books every designer needs to read. Particularly it's related to consumer psychology and behavioral impact using gamification. And you can read a book called Handbook of Gamification Designing for Engagement by Adam Peener. I've not read this book guys, but it's suggested. It's a very good book. Okay, so you can read about it. I'll be pasting in the description as well. Okay, so definitely this is going to be a amazing game changer for you if you are someone who really wants to add a creativity touch for your project. Okay, so thank you so much. We'll see you in another podcast. I hope you have enjoyed it. If you find this useful, give me a best star rating. I would highly recommend you in Apple and Spotify and subscribe me for further episodes. See you in another episode. Take care. Bye bye.