Extra-gamified: why are some apps so satisfying?

According to Statista, an average of 6,140 apps were released in Play Store everyday in the first quarter of 2018. Yet, 77% of users never returned to the app after 72 hours of installing it. What makes some apps stick so much better with users than others?

Gamification and a psychology behind Tinder

Satisfying Tetris Game (Image source: imgur)

Gamification is, “the craft of deriving all the fun and addicting elements found in games and applying them to real-world or productive activities,”

— Yu-Kai Chou, an author of Actionable Gamification

Piano stairs gamify cumbersome climbing stairs (Image source: KJ Vogelius)

Gamification is the process of incentivising users with mechanics commonly used in games, broadening them to non-game contexts. The term gamification was first introduced by Nick Pelling, a British programmer and video game designer. In 2002, Nick intended to apply gamification to common electrical transactions, such as ATMs, vending-machines, and early mobile phones. These devices had been traditionally perceived as simply mechanical and anti-user-friendly. The introduction of gamification was meant to ease potential stress and help users in proceeding with common transactions. For example, some charms from gamification have helped solve network issues, which in turn has greatly helped user experiences positively amongst the domain of early technologies and mobile devices (UX Case Study: Handling Offline for Impatient Users).

In Chrome browser, users can play a dinosaur game in case of a connection error.

“It’s the gambling-like reward, that dopamine rush of the ‘It’s a match,’ screen [… from] a variable reward that encourages continued swiping to experience this [rush] again.”

- Scott Hurff, former product manager and lead designer at Tinder