Summary

We discussed the core competencies of a product manager and the skills they need to be world-class, and how gamification relates to those skills. Can you imagine if we removed all the gamification features from PMM? A user would log in and see sparsely updated content because there needs to be manufactured motivation for users to post or share with their friends. A product manager wouldn’t add new features because the feedback loop brings back barely any insight. After all, a vital driver of the user’s motivation is gone.

The strategic implementation of gamification sparked a chain of engagement among users, inspiring them to generate content and share knowledge. This dynamic not only fostered a sense of achievement and joy but also proved so impactful that users enthusiastically spread the word to friends and colleagues. The result was a remarkable enhancement of PMM’s reputation. As a product manager, you capitalized on this momentum to introduce premium features, including education and certification programs. These additions were born out of the continuous feedback loop you established by enticing users with rewards, showcasing the strategic value of gamification.

To reiterate, gamification is essential to your job as a PM because it’s going to help you accomplish the three critical principles that are crucial to your role:

• Gamification will drive engagement because the experience is fun, the gameplay will entice users log in to your app, and they will have fun doing it so they will do it more often
• Gamification will enable you to nudge users to do mission-critical things for the app; besides driving engagement, this can be mission-critical for driving purchases, medication adherence, or socially impactful actions
• Gamification breaks the status quo – don’t create a boring app that feels like a chore

In the next chapter, we will dive into the understanding game mechanics and gamification frameworks. Now that we understand how a gamification strategy benefits product managers, we can discover the keys to the first step, which we briefly touched on here: knowing your user to see where and how gamification will benefit their experience and solve pain points.