Designing User-Oriented Experiences in a Game-Based Setting
In the realm of gamification, two design philosophies stand out: player-centred design and user-centred design. While both share a common focus on the individual interacting with a system, they differ significantly in their approach and application.
Player-centred design, specifically, targets the player's gaming experience. It emphasises engagement, motivation, and enjoyment through game mechanics such as challenges, competition, progress visibility, rewards, and social features. The design is tailored to different types of players' motivations and behaviours, fostering sustained interaction and emotional investment in gameplay or gamified experiences. Features like leaderboards, points, badges, and social relatedness are crafted to meet players' intrinsic and extrinsic motivational needs.
On the other hand, user-centred design (UCD) is a broader design philosophy that prioritises the overall usability and needs of the user interacting with any system or product, not strictly games or gamified applications. UCD involves researching user needs, iteratively testing designs, and ensuring the product is intuitive, accessible, and effective for the user's goals within the context. It is process-driven and emphasises usability over engagement techniques, often incorporating continuous user feedback in development, particularly in software or app design.
In the context of gamification projects, the key difference lies in the focus and design goal. Player-centred design aims to make the game-like experience fun, rewarding, and socially stimulating, while user-centred design ensures that the product is easy to use and aligned with user goals. The methods also differ, with player-centred design using game mechanics to influence behaviour and emotion, and user-centred design using user research, usability testing, and iterative feedback loops.
Player-centred design is a specialized subset of user-centred design, tailored to gaming motivations and behaviours to drive engagement and retention. User-centred design, however, is a general approach ensuring that all product decisions meet user needs and usability standards in any digital or physical product, including apps, websites, tools, and more.
The success or failure of a gamification project depends on how users relate to the system. To develop effective gamified systems, understanding UCD is essential. Designers who adopt user-centered design strive to help users achieve their goals efficiently, effectively, and satisfactorily. A user-centered approach is crucial in the gamification process.
Gamification originates from user-centered design (UCD) and expands on it by introducing player-centred design. The book "Gamification at Work: Designing Engaging Business Software" by Janaki Mythily Kumar and Mario Herger discusses Player-Centered Design, offering a powerful advantage in engaging users optimally in gamification projects.
Users prefer fun over complexity in gamified systems. A product that users find engaging and satisfying is more likely to be successful. If users dislike a gamified system, its technical brilliance is irrelevant. Poorly designed products often result from centring design on technology or data, rather than the user.
In conclusion, understanding the distinction between player-centred and user-centred design is crucial in the world of gamification. By combining both approaches, designers can create gamified systems that are not only easy to use but also fun, engaging, and rewarding for the users.
In the context of gamification, a combination of interaction design (utilizing game mechanics for engagement), user-centered design (prioritizing user needs and usability), and education-and-self-development (creating satisfying, engaging experiences) can lead to successful gamified systems that cater to users' lifestyles, aligning with their goals and motivations. Technology plays a role in enabling such designs, but it should remain secondary to the user's needs and experience.
