Nigel Whiteoak

Adding Game Mechanics to Oyster Cards on London Transport

It’s a tech-trend spotter’s wet-dream.

• RFID? Tick. 
• Gamification? Tick. 
• Social? Tick.

Chromaroma brings game mechanics to travel on London Transport’s RFID travel card system, Oyster. Missions, mayorships, points, leaderboards: you’ve got them all here. And you thought commuting was a chore?

Schlepping round the Underground isn’t my idea of entertainment, but Chromaroma also includes my new favourite London thing, Boris Bikes in its data-collection service, so I’m signing up. 

Chromaroma from Mudlark on Vimeo.

Gamification of Email is here thanks to the clever chaps at Baydin.

The Email Game shows you one email at a time, and ‘rewards’ you with points for dealing with that email efficiently. You get more time to deal with the email if you need to reply, and can apply for a ‘time-extension’ if it needs a particularly long reply.

Baydin are also the developers behind Boomerang, a handy plug-in for Chrome and Firefox that lets you schedule both delivery and re-receipt of gmail emails (in both GMail and Google Apps email): a nice way of helping get to #inboxzero.

Magicalia have added game mechanics to participation in their online community site, OutdoorsMagic.

Billed as the Mountain Marathon, and sponsored by Keen, they’re keeping a league table of leading community members, awarding points for posting in the forums, adding reviews and contributing new routes. They also hint at levels and special badges, but don’t reveal exactly how these work, perhaps deliberately, perhaps because they haven’t worked them out yet!

There looks like there’s been a somewhat mixed reaction from the community, with some concerns that it will lead to lower-quality ‘participation for points’. But well done to the Magicalia team for experimenting. I’ll be curious to see how this develops and whether it gets rolled-out to the other Magicalia sites.

Gamification seems to be all the rage … but how do you go about adding Game Mechanics to your business?

Here, in 10 easy steps, is what I’d do to add game mechanics to a business, with examples given for a multi-channel retailer:

1. Write down a short list of the key tasks you’d like your users to do.

For our retailer this might include:

• Visit the website
• Visit a store
• Sign-up to the newsletter
• Sign-up for the catalog
• Buy a product
• Review a product
• Recommend to a friend

2. List the main ‘variants’ for each of these tasks.

Let’s take “Visit a store” as an example. We might list:

• Store location
• Time of visit
• Day of visit
• Length of visit
• Number of visits

3. Pick a few combinations of tasks and variants to create ‘achievements’:

Let’s take store visits/ store locations as an example. Possible achievements could be:

• Visiting the first store
• Visiting five different stores
• Visiting the most northerly store
• Visiting every store

4. Pick the achievements you like the most, and make them into a ‘badge’ - give it a name and icon.

Visited every store? You win a ‘Store Explorer’ badge.

5. Groups sets of other achievements and create ‘levels’

For our retailer, a user might level up to level two once they’ve:

• Visited one store
• Visited the website on three different days
• Signed up to the newsletter

Group the achievements into levels so that users gradually deepen their engagement. Thinking about this process is perhaps the single most-valuable step in considering how game mechanics could apply to your business.

Make it easy for users to quickly progress through the first few levels.

6. Pick two or three achievements to use in ‘leaderboards’

Our retailer might consider two of the following:

• Number of reviews written
• Number of times visited a store
• Number of different products bought

7. Pick one or two achievements around which to build ‘boss’ (or ‘mayor’) status

The retailer might want to award ‘boss’ status to the user who:

• Bought the most items within a category over the past three months
• Contributes the most reviews within a product category over the past year
• Visits a given store the most in the past month

8. Consider adding an overall ‘points system’ and set points for tasks and bonus points for badges and leveling up

For the retailer we might say:

• Visit a store (task): +10 points
• Buy a product (task): +20 points
• Earn ‘Store Explorer’ badge: +200 points

9. Keep it fresh by adding temporary ‘challenges’ made up of different achievements

Challenges that the retailer might pose could include:

• Visiting five different stores in a week
• Inviting 20 friends to join in a month.

10. Celebrate and reward your best users

Our retailer’s best users might be:

• Offered a free personal shopping session at their nearest store
• Sent some branded merchandise
• Sent some gift vouchers
• Invited to an in-store event

Further reading:

HOW TO: Use Game Mechanics to Power Your Business, on Mashable

SCVNGR’s Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck, on TechCrunch