Gamify your way to better data

Anyone who has used the Duolingo app knows the power of gamification.

Duolingo employs it extensively to make language learning more engaging and habit-forming. Progress and achievement systems, competition and social accountability feature heavily, with the emphasis on positive reinforcement.

A cast of characters ask questions and guide users through interactive stories. Users earn points for every lesson they complete, with bonus points available for hitting certain milestones. The points are then tallied into a weekly leaderboard of learners in your league. Earn a high enough score and you get promoted to the next league for the following week. A low score risks demotion.

Learning streaks track consecutive days of practice, with playful reminders to practice each day. Skill trees visually depict your learning pathway and the progress you’re making. The ability to follow other learners’ progress and streak runs fosters social accountability. It is addictive and effective.

Psychology of gamification

Gamification applies the elements of game playing (rules of play, scoring systems, rewards, competition with others, ranking, progress tracking, etc.) to promote motivation and engagement with a task, product or service.

As a 2021 scientific study observed, “gamification can transparently illustrate goals and their relevance, lead users through guided paths to goal-oriented activities, give users immediate feedback and reinforce good performance positively, and simplify content to manageable tasks. The gamification mechanics can allow users to pursue individual goals and choose between several different progress paths … Social gamification elements may enable social comparison and connect users to support each other and work towards a common goal.”

Gamification supports motivation, learning and behavioural change by tapping into fundamental psychological principles. These include:

Humans are goal-oriented and find satisfaction in completing tasks and seeing measurable improvement. Visual feedback such as progress bars, levels and leaderboards make abstract work feel more concrete and rewarding.

When people achieve goals or unlock achievements their brains release dopamine, creating a sense of satisfaction and encouraging continued engagement.

Gamification addresses the basic needs for autonomy (feeling in control of your choices), competence (experiencing achievements and mastery) and relatedness (connecting with others through leaderboards, team challenges, social recognition). When these needs are met, people experience intrinsic motivation rather than simply working for external rewards.

Leaderboards tap into our competitive instincts, while public recognition of achievements satisfies our need for social validation and status. This creates both individual motivation and positive peer pressure.

Gamification can be particularly useful in business environments by transforming mundane or repetitive tasks into engaging experiences, improving learning and development, fuelling motivation, and providing insights into behaviour patterns and problem areas to help firms optimize processes.

Improving data quality through gamification

Quality data is vital to wealth management businesses – and will become ever more important as artificial intelligence use expands.

But, in truth, data correction isn’t the most rock ‘n’ roll activity. So we’re working on features that allow people to gamify the data cleanup to make this essential task more engaging.

DCI’s automated data quality solution enables users to correct critical data before it has a material impact. The system grabs data from the user firm and runs it through a comprehensive set of customisable rules to check for potential errors. Problems are identified much quicker, with an integrated workflow engine ensuring the most critical issues are resolved at the earliest opportunity. A tailored dashboard offering enterprise-wide views shows the current state of data, trends and KPIs, providing management oversight and reporting throughout the process.

The systematisation and transparency also help firms enhance their staff knowledge and training. Users can see where and why an issue emerged and how to fix it, so the same mistakes aren’t repeated. These incremental improvements become embedded in the process and aggregate to much greater accuracy and efficiency over time.

By exposing data problems, detailing the issues being investigated, where they stand, what has been resolved and when, and what hasn’t, firms’ management can lean on the gamification elements of the DCI solution to act more as a ‘carrot’ and less of a ‘stick’ to drive staff to improve error resolution rates.

Resolving data is not a once-and-done project. It’s a BAU process requiring daily checking. So you need to keep staff motivated.

The gamification in DCI includes the use of league tables between teams and members of a team, to encourage them to compete against each other to see who can both fix the most errors and create the least. It can also compare average fix times across teams, further fostering competitiveness.

Whatever the process, tapping into that human desire for improvement takes firms a long way towards better data, and better business results.