How a top-rated productivity app, Forest, uses gamification to retain users
At it’s core, the Forest app is a gamified timer to reduce distraction from your mobile phone. In 2016, it was voted Google Best App of the Year. In 2018 it was nominated for Best Social Impact App and 2018 it was Google Play Editors’ Choice for Top Productivity App.
It has over 25 million downloads and over 2 million satisfied paying users. It is also responsible for planting over 600,000 real trees on Earth by their users. How does such a simple concept have such success?
I credit it’s success to effective use of gamification psychology. The app is fun to use because it appeals to certain Core Drives within us that motivate us towards certain activities. Using, Octalysis Gamification framework, let’s dig deeper into the drivers employed by the Forest app.
Core Driver 1: Epic Meaning & Calling
Users get coins every time they plant a tree by not using their phones. For every 2500 coins earned, they get an option to plant a real-life tree. Enabling you to spend your coins to plant real trees, transforms the app from something that merely helps you be less distracted to helping you save the Earth.
Core Driver 2: Development And Accomplishment
The app challenges you to not open your phone, and get work done which gives you a sense of accomplishment. If you succeed, you earn currency in the form of virtual coins. The more time you spend focussing, the more currency you earn. You can also earn different badges for successive challenges like achieving streaks, group work, etc.
Core Driver 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback
When building your forest, you can choose to beautify it. To choose between different plants and flowers, you have to apply some creativity to make the forest look pretty. Feedback comes in the form of seeing how many trees you’ve grown i.e the number the minutes you’ve not been distracted by your phone. Having said that, while the app does utilize this driver to some extent, I would rank it low on this driver, since users do not have to use much strategy or imagination while growing their forest.
Core Driver 4: Ownership and Possession
You can accumulate currency to buy different types of trees and customize your forest. The more time you invest in customizing and growing your forest, the more ownership you feel towards it, the more you want to keep growing and beautifying it.
Core Driver 5: Social Influence and Relatedness
You can invite friends and family members to the app. If any one of you exit the app when the timer is running, then the tree will automatically die. This shared experience helps people bond, at the same time drives competition. If you do succeed at not opening using your phone, while your friends fail, you get their envy and respect.
Core Driver 6: Scarcity & Impatience
Once you start the timer, you can not pause the countdown. This creates scarcity of time and helps the users actually complete the task in the time they had originally planned.
Core Driver 7: Loss and Avoidance
If you want to use your phone while the timer is on, you’d have to click on “give up” which means you lose the progress you’ve already made in growing the tree and let the tree wither. This drives users to complete the task at hand and not accept defeat.
Core Driver 8: Unpredictability and Curiosity
There are no surprises as such within the app, except the new tree species being introduced from time to time. You know exactly how many coins you’d earn for a given time frame. I would rate the app low on the unpredictability and curiosity driver.
Overall, the app utilises both white and black hat gamification techniques and is more skewed towards left brain core drives, focussing on accomplishing tasks and achieving goals.
