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I'm working on a project for a bank X and we were asked to increase engagement in using the website of the bank and provide more interactions with the bank in a way of gamification. its very problematic because in games people like to compare their scores etc. and here we cant share personal information to other users... earning awards for doing tasks is also boring.

Do you have any ideas of benchmark what could be a sorce of inspiration for us?

thx

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  • Why does the bank want that? Do they want to unburden the physical office and save clients' time?
    – Heitor
    Aug 23, 2016 at 12:08
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    "Increase engagement" seems a pretty vague target to shoot at. What do they really want to accomplish? What numbers do they as a bank want to see go up? How could you translate that into "rewardable" user actions? Mind you: I would hate for my bank to spend time and money on something like this. If it is engagement they seek, let them try to be more engaging as a bank. Aug 23, 2016 at 12:13
  • This sounds like your school gave you a gamification project and you want us to tell the answers. Why would a bank you're supposedly work for want to use gamificaition?
    – Summer
    Aug 23, 2016 at 12:51

2 Answers 2

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There is a lot more to gamification than points, badges and leader-boards. In Kevin Werbach & Dan Hunter's book "For the win: How Game thinking can revolutionise your business" (catchy title) they describe a 6 step process (in priority order):

  • DEFINE business objectives
  • DELINEATE target behaviours
  • DESCRIBE your players
  • DEVISE activity cycles
  • DON'T forget the fun!
  • DEPLOY the appropriate tool

It is only in this last step do you start thinking about the actual gamification mechanics.

The first step is crucial because you really need to align with business objectives and you need to think about how you will measure success.

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Maybe you can try only gamification techniques. A progress bar telling the user that their profile is 85% complete motivates they finishing completing their profile, right?

So why don't you just remind users how fast it is to use the website instead of going to the bank physically? Put a message when the user finishes a transaction telling how much time they spend to do so, like: "Congratulations. It took only 3 minutes from you to make this money transfer."

Also, there are safe ways to make comparisons between user scores. Show anonimous scores. And search for not so sensible data. For example: a user can score when they show a change in their behavior, decreasing their visits to the physical bank and increasing their access to the website, but you don't tell other users who this user is, neither where he/she is, what time, etc.

Have in mind that gamification is very powerful for motivating people to do what they already want to do. Save time is an example. But if they don't trust the website security, gamification won't help much.

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    Gamification is something much more complicated than you think. Gamification is a whole system inside other existing system. If you put 85% completeness of the profile, that's not gamification. That's progress bar. You have to research what values do your users seek in your bank and then use game mechanics to emphasize on them. It's not just put profile completion progress bar, some rankings, some badges and you are ready. Gamification is really hard to get and if you don't research your users you have a pretty good chance that you will fail. Aug 23, 2016 at 12:40
  • @KristiyanLukanov I think if you were to include some sort of badge/reward at the end of that 85% profile progress bar that would count as gamification, it wouldn't be good gamification, but it would be a step.
    – DasBeasto
    Aug 23, 2016 at 12:42
  • @DasBeasto You are right, it is a step but It won't create much engagement. Earning a badge for completed profile won't make the user come back several times. You have to find what intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to emphasize on. if you don't find this you are wasting a lot of time and money. Aug 23, 2016 at 12:55
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    @Heitor This is gamification technique, but not whole game experience. Gamification creates engagement when the user can achieve game experience in an mundane app. And this is really hard to do with just 1 game mechanic. Aug 23, 2016 at 12:59
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    @KristiyanLukanov: True. Since we don't know yet what the bank wants to improve ("increase engagement" is vague), we can't gamify on that, so my answer is still "use gamification techniques and test". I edited the answer to make it clearer. Thanks for the comments.
    – Heitor
    Aug 23, 2016 at 13:18

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