Ways in Which Gamification Can Help You Increase User Engagement
Mobile apps can be tiring and repetitive after a certain point. All of us have seen a time where we are tired of using a mobile app. This can specifically happen more in healthcare apps. It is crucial to capture the attention of users and provide them with a medium and motivation to take action, in order to engage them with an app. Gamification within the app can definitely help this.
The features of gamification are such that it can help patients learn to overcome their problems and pain in a slightly better way. The mobile healthcare apps could really use some gamification to increase user engagement. Gamification can offer characteristics or features like rewards, challenges, moving up to a superior level. These are related to progress tracking metrics which can help motivate patients to fight their illness.
Using Gamification means utilizing game mechanics. Making use of video games or in non-entertainment context to evoke behavioral change. Competition and participation of the user are facilitated by liveliness, rewards, transparency, and challenges. There are several ways through which gamification can help boost user engagement in healthcare app.
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1. Increasing Focus on Health Information
Playing a game or doing a task requires some level focus. This can help promote competitiveness and dedication. Selective attention can help in silencing distractions. This allows us to focus on information that is more important.
The electrical activity of the brain charges and shoots up as you start playing the game. This happens because the brain is learning a new task or a new piece of information. When this thing is repeated, it increases learning until it becomes a natural function of the brain. Thus, increasing focus and attention are powerful ways to improve the health of the patients.
2. The Element of Fun
Gamification helps to add the element of fun by the way of learning in creative ways. There are a lot of students who often struggle in school because they don’t have enough interest or aren’t engaged enough in the whole classroom setting. But they are ready to spend hours on video games though.
Games involve a broader sense of learning, compared to classrooms and textbooks. Here players face situations where they are needed to acquire a specific skill or a piece of information by performing antics and use that information to solve the riddles and puzzles further in the game. The same principle can be applied to apps for healthcare.
3. Motivates Acquisition and Application of Knowledge
Gamification can not only be used for current patients, but also for people who run the risk of getting sick or catching certain diseases. By introducing gamification, healthy people can be motivated to keep a check on their health status.
Participation of the patients can help to acquire new knowledge and using it further in the app. Several motivators like level-up, rewards, badges, leadership scores etc can increase engagement and enjoyment in the users. By offering goals and helping achieve those goals can be good as it will create a sense of accomplishment and encourage further learning. All this will contribute to health literacy.
Final Word
Health apps can not only be used to improve a patient’s health or motivate them to get better. A lot of things can be added to it. For example, doctor’s appointments, number of therapy sessions attended, monitoring medications and intake etc can also be recorded and a full overview of the patient’s program can be provided with a proper track record and improvements.
A lot can be done for patients using healthcare apps. Professional app development companies can find ways to increase engagement and enjoyment in a mobile healthcare app. This is extremely important as it is related to a lot of people suffering from a disease or going through a difficult time period. Want to know more about healthcare apps? You can feel free to contact us and talk to our experts to clarify your doubts.
Rajiv Patil is the founder & Managing Director of Nimblechapps, an innovative iPhone app development company. He takes a keen interest in topics related to mobile app development and mobile game development and often like to share his knowledge through informative posts on leading blogging sites.