Currency is for spending: Once customers are engaged with your system, giving them spendable currency is a powerful way to drive investment. This tactic is most effective if it’s layered onto other skill-building systems, instead of being used in isolation. Duolingo, for example, awards “lingots” for completing activities, which you can spend on cu

Take your cues from the habits and desires of your experts—the people who master your systems and long to go deeper. Your goal is to create systems that tap into the deep needs and motivations of your most passionate players.

Now think about situational triggers—the transitions, rituals, and events that structure your customer’s daily life and appear in your job stories.

Mastery Is Better than Progress Many non-game designers understand this and eagerly adopt points, badges, leaderboards, and ratings systems to track and reward progress. They soon learn what every game designer knows: Numbers alone don’t confer meaning.

Just as character transformation is the backbone of great drama, personal transformation is the backbone of great gameplay.

What solutions have you tried to solve this problem? How’d that work for you? We know that actions speak louder than words, and this question will separate true early adopters from the pack.

Empower Experts to Have Real Impact

Enhance my self-image: Anytime you customize your identity or environment, you’re investing a bit of yourself into the system.

Don’t fall into the common trap of thinking that your innovative offering will create brand-new habits. If you want to drive adoption and retention, it’s easier to piggyback on an existing habit than get someone to build an entirely new one, just for your product.