Gamification of the product. History Ratatype
Gamification is the use of game mechanics in non-game situations and products. Elements of the game are increasingly entering our daily lives. For example, we can make purchases in one supermarket only because we need to collect a collection of heroes from Star Wars or we pay with a mastercard all the time to earn points. Gamification allows you to improve the behavioral factors of your site and engage the user. That is why we decided to add a little fan to our product - the Ratatype keyboard simulator.
In 2013, the American -language Ratatype keyboard simulator was created.
A couple of years on the site in the interface and logic did not change anything, since it was made cool, stylish, fashionable, youth. But time passes, and the product needs to be developed. After analyzing the site, the audience and its behavior, we realized that learning to print is, of course, good, but it’s even better to do it with a share of fan and competition.
Each Ratatype course consists of several lessons (different languages have a different number of lessons, the minimum in English is 15). And each lesson contains several exercises from 5 to 23.
I went through the exercise - I saw how many mistakes I made and what your speed is. A good result or not so is incomprehensible. There is no motivation to go through again. So that users do not get bored and try to improve their skills, we decided to add a gamification element to the learning process. The idea is very simple - after completing the exercise, reward the user with asterisks.
And so the exercise went, I saw my speed and the number of errors, but for some reason I did not get all the stars. So, you can improve the result and pass the exercise again.
We decided on the idea, now it was necessary to think over the mechanics and decide how many stars to use.
At first, of course, we looked like others, including competitors. They realized that they mainly give 3 or 5 stars. We watched the most popular games (for example, Cut the rope and Angry birds), there were 3 stars each.
We decided to do 3 - it's easier.
"
Why, in fact, give stars?
It would seem, what is there to think? He painted the stars and that's it, painted, painted in the right color - done. And nooo, the value of our company “Good or nothing” does not allow to do this. Just the stars are too trite and they have no soul. Therefore, we decided to create a team of assistants for our hero: an asterisk (where would it be without it), a target and lightning.
"
It turned out living heroes, who, moreover, appear with animation.
In addition, we redid the presentation of the lessons in the personal section so that the final result for each lesson and exercise in particular was visible.
"
They tried to do more with less, and still the process took about 1 month, but this is subject to testing and corrections. By the way, we do not have testers, so the programmer and manager perform this function. 1 senior programmer worked on the project, below are some details on the project:
If you expected to see super-attendance growth charts here, then I have to disappoint you. We added a small element of the game to one of the places on the site, and to a greater extent this did not affect the attendance, but the behavioral of those users who have already visited us. Therefore, analytics was watched mainly by returning users. In this case, we compared 2 weeks before the download of updates and after (date H - April 27).
So what has changed?
"
But the comparison is 2 months before and after the update.
"
We are not going to stop and will come up with something else interesting for our users. And given how the game industry is growing and developing rapidly, this is a must.
That's all, I'll go run my 10 km, otherwise the circles are not closed.
PS The next article will be about email newsletters in which we actively involved our heroes. By the way, Ratatype still exists in Ukrainian , Russian , French and Spanish . So you can go to practice.
A bit of history
In 2013, the American -language Ratatype keyboard simulator was created.
A couple of years on the site in the interface and logic did not change anything, since it was made cool, stylish, fashionable, youth. But time passes, and the product needs to be developed. After analyzing the site, the audience and its behavior, we realized that learning to print is, of course, good, but it’s even better to do it with a share of fan and competition.
Each Ratatype course consists of several lessons (different languages have a different number of lessons, the minimum in English is 15). And each lesson contains several exercises from 5 to 23.
How did we come to gamification
I went through the exercise - I saw how many mistakes I made and what your speed is. A good result or not so is incomprehensible. There is no motivation to go through again. So that users do not get bored and try to improve their skills, we decided to add a gamification element to the learning process. The idea is very simple - after completing the exercise, reward the user with asterisks.
And so the exercise went, I saw my speed and the number of errors, but for some reason I did not get all the stars. So, you can improve the result and pass the exercise again.
We decided on the idea, now it was necessary to think over the mechanics and decide how many stars to use.
Development details
At first, of course, we looked like others, including competitors. They realized that they mainly give 3 or 5 stars. We watched the most popular games (for example, Cut the rope and Angry birds), there were 3 stars each.
We decided to do 3 - it's easier.
"
Mechanics
Why, in fact, give stars?
- In our country, for example, to complete an exercise, you must type in a text faster than 50 characters / min and make no more than two mistakes. So, the first star can be given just for completing the exercise .
- We believe that error minimization is an important factor in print speed. Printing without errors means that you are not distracted by their correction, which means that you print faster. The second star - for 0 errors and minimum speed .
- And they decided to give a third for speed when committing no more than two errors. The speed threshold was set different everywhere.
- We looked at how fast the users are doing the exercises.
- Put everything in one Excel spreadsheet.
- They broke the speed into ranges from 50 characters / min to the maximum in increments of 10.
- We decided that the third star will be able to get about 30% of all users, and the rest will have an incentive to retrain the exercise.
- The threshold for each exercise was determined according to the previous paragraph.
Design
It would seem, what is there to think? He painted the stars and that's it, painted, painted in the right color - done. And nooo, the value of our company “Good or nothing” does not allow to do this. Just the stars are too trite and they have no soul. Therefore, we decided to create a team of assistants for our hero: an asterisk (where would it be without it), a target and lightning.
"
It turned out living heroes, who, moreover, appear with animation.
In addition, we redid the presentation of the lessons in the personal section so that the final result for each lesson and exercise in particular was visible.
"
Programming
They tried to do more with less, and still the process took about 1 month, but this is subject to testing and corrections. By the way, we do not have testers, so the programmer and manager perform this function. 1 senior programmer worked on the project, below are some details on the project:
- The speed and number of errors are set in the admin panel, in the exercise settings.
- The user's reward for passing the line is recorded in the database as the number 1-4.
- The calculation of the rewards for the whole lesson (based on the totality of the exercises completed) is carried out on the conclusion, on those pages where you need to show it.
- In determining the reward for a lesson is given if all lines of the lesson contain the same reward. For example, you can get a target only if all the exercises in the lesson were completed without errors.
- Animation occurs due to changes in the properties of css awards and is controlled by JS. It consists of 3 cycles identical in logic to display 3 awards and starts 0.3 seconds after processing the results of the exercise on ajax and displaying them in a modal window.
Result
If you expected to see super-attendance growth charts here, then I have to disappoint you. We added a small element of the game to one of the places on the site, and to a greater extent this did not affect the attendance, but the behavioral of those users who have already visited us. Therefore, analytics was watched mainly by returning users. In this case, we compared 2 weeks before the download of updates and after (date H - April 27).
So what has changed?
- The number of page views increased by 3%.
- The average time spent on the site has grown by 4%.
- The number of pages per session increased by 3%.
- The failure rate decreased by 5%.
"
But the comparison is 2 months before and after the update.
"
We are not going to stop and will come up with something else interesting for our users. And given how the game industry is growing and developing rapidly, this is a must.
Why is it worth gamifying your product?
- You get closer to the user.
It's great to make a product with some kind of hero. You can take an animal and come up with an original name that will be associated with your brand. You can come up with some kind of weirdo or monster. - Brand awareness is increasing.
Remember the clip-assistant in the Word, but it was cool. You can revive any object - the main thing is not afraid and do not limit imagination. - User engagement is increasing.
Everything is simple: heroes, awards, badges, points, chips, points, etc. entice the user to come to you again and again. Spend more time on the site or earn points with 5 purchases in the online store, or run 5 kilometers to get such a long-awaited badge. There is a lot of space for experiments in this field. - A little fun while working has not bothered anyone.
I called 30 clients - get a coin in the admin panel, the first to bill - take the candy, deflected the feature - +1 in karma. Small things bring fan and excitement to the work of employees. And if all this is spiced up with witty and encouraging phrases, the effect will be even cooler!
That's all, I'll go run my 10 km, otherwise the circles are not closed.
PS The next article will be about email newsletters in which we actively involved our heroes. By the way, Ratatype still exists in Ukrainian , Russian , French and Spanish . So you can go to practice.
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