The purpose of gamification is not to create a whole game, but to reveal the potential of users by using game mechanics. Thanks to gamification, which has recently been used in the business world, work becomes more enjoyable for employees. In addition, the internal and external motivations of the employees are triggered and the efficiency in their performance increases. Of course, when making gamification designs, it is not enough to take a few game mechanics and integrate them into the design. In gamification, it is important to weigh the psychological states of the users and to choose the mechanics and tasks that will motivate them and increase their performance. It is very important to benefit from the science of psychology while doing this. Many theories in psychology help us to achieve the goal while designing gamification. Prof. Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory is one of these theories.
We can think of the concept of flow, which gives the theory its name, as not being able to understand how time passes while dealing with something, being able to focus completely and thus not understanding how time passes. Over the years, Csikszentmihalyi met with poets, music composers and people from many other groups to investigate the secret of their success in what they do, and what makes them forget even their basic needs such as food and water while dealing with these works. According to flow theory, there are two basic elements to be considered for a person to immerse himself in the flow: Skills and Challenges. For this reason, when making gamification designs, it is necessary to know the target audience and position the difficulty levels of the tasks in the right proportion to the skills of the users. If the difficulties of the tasks are more than the skills of the users, the users will leave the game thinking that they will not be able to succeed. If their skill level is well above the quest difficulty, they may get bored and quit the game this time around. Therefore, it is necessary to establish this balance well.
To summarize, it is very important to create a flow when designing gamification. In order to create flow, the user must feel himself in the game. For this reason, gamification designs are easy to learn and should be designed in a way that helps users to proceed step by step with instructions. If the users’ skills and the tasks do not go hand in hand, the motivation of the users may decrease.
Imona Game Team
