Gamification Strategies

The Way to Health platform enables researchers and care teams to deploy interventions the leverage behavioral economic concepts of gamification and social incentives.

Gamification is the use of game design in non-game situations. Social incentives are a patient-centered approach that leverages and enhances the existing connections and influences on the individual. Since one individual’s behavior change is connected to many others within their network, social incentives have the potential to be a scalable intervention that impacts population health.

Features

Points: Points can be allocated via a gain- or loss-framed model. Participants can earn points for achieving a behavior or they can start with a bank of points and lose for not achieving a behavior.

Levels: Participants can move up and down levels based on acheiving or not acheiving a behavior, or based on points earned.

Badges: Participant earns badges for completing milestones (e.g. Walking a total of 100,000 steps)

Models

Individual Model

Individual participants play a game where they start at the Silver level, with 70 points at the beginning of a week. Each day that they achieve a goal, they keep their points. At the end of the week if the goal is achieved 4 out of 7 days (or greater than 40 points), the participant will move up a level (blue, bronze, silver, gold, platinum). If not, they move down a level. If at the platinum level at the end of the intervention, they receive a physical trophy.

Below are models that Way to Health supports that combine gamification and social incentive strategies.

Supportive Model

Individual model + the study participant identifies a support partner who receives a weekly email message with the participant’s progress.

Collaborative Model

Individual participants are assigned a cohort or team. The team starts at the Silver level, with 70 points at the beginning of a week. Each day, the platform randomly selects a team representative. If that team representative achieves a goal, the team keeps their points. At the end of the week if the team retains 40 points or more, the team will move up a level (blue, bronze, silver, gold, platinum). If not, the team will move down a level. If at the platinum level at the end of the intervention, the entire team receives a physical trophy.

Competitive Model

Individual model + study participants will be assigned a cohort where they will compete against other study participants. At the end of each week they are sent a leaderboard which shows their points and levels compared to the others in the cohort.