Gamification in Wellness Apps: Keeping Users Engaged and Motivated

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Anton Panteleimenko iOS Developer

Everyone agrees on the importance of health – it’s our most valuable resource for living a full and zestful life. The digital age has seen numerous health apps popping up to help people take care of themselves. 

But what about people who lack the motivation to do so? After all, staying healthy is a lot of work and sometimes can feel like a chore. Gamification was a solution to make taking care of yourself a more engaging and rewarding experience. 

Today, we want to talk about gamification as a tool for user engagement and how to implement it.

Why Gamification Is Essential for User Motivation in Wellness Applications?

Gamification is the concept of applying game principles and designs to non-gaming fields, such as healthcare or retail. Gamification can make users more engaged and interested in exercising or eating healthy when using wellness apps.

Instead of relying on the user’s inner motivation, which can be inconsistent, some wellness apps present gamified features that stimulate users psychologically. 

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For example, at the end of the training course, instead of presenting them with raw statistics, gamified apps will give users a visually appealing badge or achievement. Rewards like this serve as an additional incentive to use the app more frequently.

Another element of motivating users with gamification is competition. To create a competitive environment in wellness apps, developers can add a points system and a leaderboard to reward players for their activity.

Overall, gamified elements help users reinforce positive habits. Instead of presenting users with a long-term goal, the process is divided into small milestones that take less effort on their own. Let’s talk more about it.

How Gamification Can Drive User Motivation and Engagement in Health Apps

Now that we understand what gamification is, we need to cover what it brings to the table from a business standpoint. Here are some of the benefits you can expect from health app gamification:

How gamification can benefit your wellness app

• Increased user engagement: Users tend to spend more time in the app if they feel they are getting a reward out of it. This is where elements like daily streaks come in. Rewarding people for using your app every day and not breaking their streak creates an incentive to use it more; 

• High user motivation: Instead of presenting users with major long-term goals that may seem daunting, gamified wellness apps divide larger health goals into smaller, more easily attainable ones. These milestones function as progress trackers and make it easier for a user to keep going, since smaller goals are easier to achieve; 

• Sources of insights: Milestones and achievements provide valuable insights into users’ preferences and behaviors, which can be used for further app improvements;

• Additional marketing instrument: Learning new skills through games is easier. Instead of feeling like a dreaded chore, the app should be fun, making the app more attractive to current and potential users.

Gamified wellness apps ensure users stay engaged and enjoy using the app. And while this sounds good on paper, does it really bring results? Let’s take a look at one of the apps we’ve developed.

How about getting the most of these benefits? Let's dicuss your gamification strategy! Leave us a message here

Keeping Users Motivated in Health Apps: How CHI Software Did It

One of the best ways to reinforce a healthy lifestyle is to exercise with friends. But during the global pandemic, staying motivated to exercise and connected with other people got a lot harder.  

To combat this issue, our client developed an app that helps users monitor and track their health in connection with their friends. To improve on their existing solution, they asked us for help developing one particularly important feature — a leaderboard. 

Integrating Wearable Technology with Wellness Apps for Real-Time Health Monitoring Read more

The concept of a leaderboard is a form of gamification encouraging competition. To make it even more interesting, we devised a solution: instead of one global leaderboard, why not let users compete locally? 

This led us to the creation of a leaderboard that can be adjusted to one city, organization, or just a group of friends. We also implemented a point system to rank user activity, where the more users exercised, the more points they earned.  

How leaderboards may work for fitness app users

While this feature is interesting on its own, that’s not the only thing the application had in store:

• User personalization: to create a customized workout plan based on users’ age, gender, weight, and height;
• Progress summary: to make users more interested in exercising, the app allows them to get results by the day, week, or month;
• Core metric monitoring: to offer users visual insights into their progress, the app tracks and shows core metrics, such as sets, calories, hours, etc.

The project took us four months to finish. To learn more about the app’s concept and features, you can read our case study in full. But it’s surely not the only successful example of gamification. Let’s look at what else the market has to offer. 

Looking for a team with a proven expertise in wellness app development? We're right here. Let's talk!

Examples of Successful Gamification in Wellness and Fitness Apps

There are numerous cases of gamification techniques for health apps out there – in this section, we’ll show you just the tip of the iceberg.

Fitness App Gamification of MyFitnessPal

When it comes down to fitness solutions, MyFitnessPal stands out for how engaging it is. At first glance, you might think it’s just an app that tracks calories and exercises – but it’s not about what it does; it’s about how it does it.

Gamification elements in MyFitnessPal

Shortly after using the app, you’ll notice the gamified elements. For example, users can set their own goals and see their progress through reports, which works great at motivating continuous training and users feeling in control over the process.

Additionally, MyFitnessPal comes with a community built in. It cultivates a supportive environment where users reinforce their motivation and can create new connections.

Weight Loss Turned Into a Game: Weight Watchers’ Story

Weight Watchers is an app created by WW International, a company that specializes in weight loss and fitness programs. Pioneers of the weight loss industry, they know that the key to success is a personalized approach with gamification features sprinkled in.

Gamification in the WeightWatchers app

To keep users interested in progressing on their goals, numerous features were added:

• Badges and rewards for achieving milestones;
• Challenges and competitions to create a friendly competitive environment to motivate every user to do their best;
• Leaderboards and rankings add even more competition and serve as additional motivators for achieving goals.

Meditation Made Fun: How Headspace Is Changing Mental Health Awareness

Headspace specializes in mental health, initially focusing on online counseling and coaching, but in recent years branched out into app development as well.

Gamification in the Headspace app

The Headspace app aims to help users with their mental health by gamifying their meditation routine and creating statistics on the overall app’s usage. Seeing the total time they’ve spent meditating or how many sessions completed through streaks incentivizes the user to continue their performance, helping to make meditation a regular habit.

Play Games and Workout: Peloton’s Lanebreak

Peloton, an American exercise equipment and media company, designs training gear like stationary bikes and treadmills. What sets them apart is the internet-connected touch screens on all their products. This innovation led to Peloton Lanebreak, a subscription-based fitness class with gamified elements.

Gamification in Peloton’s Lanebreak

Peloton Lanebreak has its own specialized software for Peloton products that syncs workouts to users’ favorite music. While riding a virtual track to their chosen beats, users hit milestones based on workout goals and song intensity. Passing these milestones earn them points, which contribute to the user’s performance on a song-specific leaderboard. 

Best Practices for Integrating Gamification in Wellness Applications

While understanding gamification is very straightforward, some businesses struggle with implementation. Here, we’ve gathered several tips that will help you create an engaging experience for your users.

Think About Your Strategy

To start, let’s talk about how games work. Every game is built on two pillars: mechanics and dynamics. 

Mechanics define what users need to do to progress. A good example in wellness app terms would be the number of sets a user needs to do to earn a reward.

Telehealth App Development: Everything You Need to Know Read more

Dynamics focuses on behavior and patterns. Think about what prevents users from progressing too fast, encourages them to continue their journey, and what personal struggles users have. 

By clearly defining the mechanics and dynamics of your app, you will create a sense of steady progression and feedback on the user’s actions, which is a crucial part of any motivation strategy in health apps. 

Implementing Gamified UI/UX

Gamified UI/UX elements used in mobile apps

The overall design shouldn’t take itself too seriously. Instead of just ticking the box under exercise – give the user some kind of visual reward — a badge, a sticker, or points. A visual-based approach allows for more gamified elements, such as leaderboards, and will create an incentive to take on more challenges. 

For an even more engaging design, work on two sets of rewards: milestones and long-term goals. These will give users a sense of value for their main goal and keep them interested in their progress.

AI-Powered Training App Development: The Ultimate Guide Read more

Ensuring Security

Like any other wellness solution, gamified apps collect user data, which always requires proper protection: be sure to implement encryption, add firewalls to your servers, and set up user authentication to control access to your app.

By following our tips, your app can promote wellness app user retention and help users reach their goals in a fun and creative way. Remember the purpose of gamified elements is to serve as a hook for users to keep going, so they shouldn’t dwarf the app’s main features. 

Conclusion

Games are fun to play, and they can often keep us hooked from the start to the end. This power of engagement transfers perfectly into wellness apps as well. Boosting app retention with gamification in healthcare solutions results in an engaging and fun way to stay healthy.

However, to create such software, you need experts in the field. And lucky for you, you’ve already found us! We at CHI Software are highly qualified in creating engaging wellness apps with gamification elements, and we love to combine them with gamified mechanics for better user engagement. 

So, what are you waiting for? Contact us today, and we’ll see you at the finish line!

About the author

Anton Panteleimenko iOS Developer

Anton is a skilled iOS developer with a knack for building user-friendly and modern mobile apps. Always eager to explore new technologies, he stays up-to-date with the latest trends in iOS development and remains at the forefront of mobile engineering.