Gamification Done Right

Developers tend to cringe at the term “gamification,” regarding it with a level of contempt they reserve for words favored by business types. Other examples include “the link economy,” “monetization” and “synergy.”

If you're unfamiliar with the concept, gamification is a design approach that applies game mechanics to otherwise non-game scenarios. For example, think of the cards you can get at certain coffee shops to earn a free cup by purchasing nine. A drink isn't just a drink; it's an item for your drinking quest inventory. (Collect nine to level up!)

A more elaborate example is HabitRPG, which uses a game look and feel for your to-do lists and personal goals. In this case, eight-bit game graphics, hit points and experience points are deployed in an overt way: instead of overlaying game mechanics on an otherwise plain process, HabitRPG pulls the process itself into the world of games.

I think HabitRPG works quite well, but it highlights an aspect of gamification that bothers some people: the “uncanny valley” factor (think playing Pac-Man to balance your checkbook, though I don't think that actually exists). Like many powerful design concepts, gamification must be handled with care.

Gamification done right doesn't have to look and feel like a game.

So what makes gamification work well? This post looks at an example in which the game elements are so subtle, you might not even notice you're playing a game at all.

For most people, banking is pretty cut and dried. You put money in, you pull money out, you take out a loan, you pay the loan back. Consequently, most banking software is equally straightforward. You can get a listing of transactions, and there are some forms for moving things around. Most banks also have additional services like bill payment and mail-in check deposit. But if you are like me, you mostly interact with your bank via A.T.M.'s, checks and occasional trips to the website. I like my bank a lot, but I suspect my bank views me as just another source of cash. And that website? It ain't pretty.

When I first heard about Simple.com, I got the sense that the main objective was to create a bank that was entirely digital and had really beautiful software. That sounded pretty good, because bank software is almost universally ugly, and frequently painful to use.

But I was wrong. Simple didn't want to make banking software beautiful, though I'm pleased to say they succeeded wildly at that anyway; Simple.com is the most beautiful bank site I've ever seen, and their Android app is one of the nicest apps I've ever seen, period. But aesthetics are just a baseline. Because what Simple actually wants to do is get you to play a game. The game is called “Master Your Finances,” and you are Player 1. Here's how it works.

Safe to Spend: Keeping Score

If there's one number you're guaranteed to see on a bank site, it's your balance, the total amount of money in your accounts. I take this number for granted, so much so that it never occurred to me to question its value. What other number could there be?

But once you start playing the Simple Game, you realize this is a number that matters to the bank much more than it matters to you. What you care about is how much money you can use right now. For instance, you know you're going to have to pay your rent or mortgage. That money is effectively already spent. Same for any recurring bills. And if you auto-deduct your savings (which you should), that number is also already accounted for. Some banks will at least subtract that last number from your balance and show you a more realistic number.

Simple goes a step further, and treats this effective balance as The Balance. They call it “Safe to Spend.” Simple makes hiding money the key to its whole approach. This is very effective, especially when combined with one of Simple's other features: goals.

Goals

When you first open an account, most banks will also set up a savings account for you. Most banks will let you create several savings accounts. When my dad set up my first bank account, he gave me three savings accounts: Regular, Christmas, and Vacation. I never used them, but I got the point.

In the Simple game, all savings are transacted through discrete goals. It's not the goals themselves that are most interesting. What interests me here is that Simple won't let you save any other way. This means you can't save money without attaching some sort of emotional meaning to it.

For example, I like to wear sports coats. Let's say I'd like to get a new one, and I know it'll cost about $500. (I like nice sport coats.) I could set up a standard automatic transfer and spend the money when I have enough, but my deductions wouldn't have an obvious context or meaning. In Simple, I go to the goals page and say I would like to have $500 in three months. Simple tells me it will deduct about five dollars every day. If that's too high for my comfort level, I can stretch out the due date to my liking. Simple will then incorporate these known deductions into my Safe to Spend number.

Setting up a savings goal on Simple.com.

Running all my savings via goals has changed my whole attitude toward saving. On a certain level, saving has always felt to me like denying myself fun spending opportunities. In the Simple Game, the opposite has proven true. Because every goal has a name and a committed plan, and because the transactions are presented in small increments, saving has become an anticipatory pleasure. In fact, it's getting to the point where if I don't have savings built up, major purchases just aren't as fun.

Checks

When you sign up for an account, Simple sends you a debit card in the mail, in the most beautiful card vessel I've ever seen. What they don't send you is a checkbook. I hate writing checks and rarely write them, but occasionally there's no other payment option.

Many banks offer a bill payment service and essentially write the check for you. Once again, Simple takes away the choice. Instead of giving you checks, Simple gives you a form to fill out and figures out the rest. The benefit? Because Simple knows about the check from the start, the amount can immediately be deducted from your Safe to Spend number.

This is no small thing. Lots of banks make good money charging overdraft fees to customers who write checks for money that isn't there. With Simple, this is much harder to do. The result is a heightened confidence.

Level Up

Simple doesn't present overt game references. There are no points. There are no levels. You can't buy a better sword. There are no enemies.

But make no mistake: this is a game. Finance is, and always has been, a kind of survival game. I just didn't notice that until I started playing the Simple version, and even then I only noticed it after several months of thinking I was just trying out a bank.

This is how gamification should be done.

A lot of attention tends to be paid to the genesis of an idea. But this is rarely a helpful exercise; most ideas aren't new, just new to you, and an idea is a fairly useless thing. It's the details that make an idea useful or interesting or fun. I think this is the key to good gamification: it's a suite of details. If “game” or “game mechanics” is part of the description or the jargon-filled “requirements” for your app, it's time to think twice. Instead, gamification should be an approach you keep in mind when solving software problems of any sort. The tools are too powerful to ignore.