Understand Gamification

Gamification is the practice of incorporating the elements of a game (such as points and rewards) into non-game contexts. Gamification is a great way to increase user engagement in your community: you "reward" your community users for their involvement in the community and their interactions with community content and with other community members.

But simply instituting a system of "rewards" isn't enough. You have to understand and monitor the results of your gamification program in order to truly understand the engagement levels of your community users. And understanding your users' engagement is key to maintaining and growing a successful online community.

Gamification in your community

Higher Logic wants your community to be successful, and to help with this success, we include the building blocks of a gamification program in every community site. As your community users engage with your community content and with other community users, they can accumulate points in order to:

earn badges, and
be awarded ribbons.

Higher Logic provides the foundation by providing a pre-loaded set of engagement activities for you to customize and manage for your community.

Engagement Activities overview

Engagement Activities are the community-related activities that your users engage in, such as:

attending an event;
creating a Library Entry;
joining a community;
adding a previous employer to their job history; and
answering a question.

It's evident that the breadth of activities spans many aspects of the online-community experience.

Reputation points

In addition to earning points for their own actions, users can earn points based on the actions of another user, such as:

their answer being marked as "best answer" by another user and
their content being recommended by another user.

Customize activity points for your community

Engagement Activities point values are customizable; you can tailor your points scheme to whatever you think is best for your gamification program. You decide:

whether an activity should be a "points-earner" and, if so
how many points a user should be awarded for performing the activity.

Consider:

Is uploading a picture to a profile more "valuable" than attending an online event?
Is sending a message to a contact more, less, or equally as valuable as commenting on a discussion?

Visit the Engagement Points page. Review the list of activities. Decide for yourself.

Then set your custom point values for the engagement activities in your unique community.

Learn about Engagement Activities and how to set their point values in Engagement Activities and Points.

What's the point of all these points?

After you have set the point values for your community's engagement activities, users will start earning those points when they perform those activities. But why?

The point of the points: Ribbons and Badges

Awarding ribbons and badges to users is a great way to encourage participation in and commitment to your online community. The promise of being rewarded is an incentive to community users to be active and engaged members.

Typically:

Badges are used as rewards for achievements; they are "earned" based on a user's engagement in the community.
Ribbons are used as identifiers; they are "given" or assigned to users by an Admin.

NOTE: Ribbons and badges are an ideal way to recognize user engagement because the ribbons and badges display on users' Profiles where users can see each other's achievements.

See Understand Ribbons and Badges to learn more and Manage Ribbons and Badges to learn how to manage your community's ribbons and badges.

How Users Earn Ribbons and Badges describes the two methods by which users get rewarded.
Create Ribbons and Badges details the ribbon and badge "create" options and settings.
Engagement Report & Summary Dashboard describes the engagement dashboard which provides a snapshot of member engagement across your site.

Gamification Overview - Rewarding User Engagement