Gamification & the Hunt for Information: The Case of the Heritage Hunter
In March 2021, The National Heritage Board of Singapore (NHB) completed the revamp of roots.gov.sg, a website serving as a one-stop digital concierge for exploring Singapore’s culture and heritage, organising over 120, 000 content items into different categories to facilitate better user experience. To promote visits to the website, NHB launched a virtual event, Heritage Hunter.
At its heart, Heritage Hunters is exactly what it sounds like — it encourages users to trawl through the website, hunting for treasure in the form of animated golden coins which were only located in specific web pages within the site. While obviously not worth anything on its own by virtue of being virtual, what the coins did do was enter users into a lucky draw, with new prizes on the line every week. New clues were also uploaded across a variety of social media platforms.
A couple of classic elements of gamification are present here. The presence of virtual coins as part of a full set of collectibles for finding the right webpage appeals to the collector in all of us. Utilising a lucky draw, aside from the material aspect of the prizes themselves, also triggers a sense of unpredictability in outcomes that keeps people in suspense. These all serve the ultimate goal of getting users to explore the smorgasbord of heritage information that Roots has to offer, from old residential neighborhoods to war memorials and traditional attire. By making the clues more obscure and tough, the game heightens the player’s sense of accomplishment as they find the right pages before anyone else does.
While gamification may sound like fun all the time, it is much deeper than that — browsing through a heritage website is not everyone’s idea of fun. Rather, gamification is the application of mechanics commonly found in games to drive human behaviour. By crafting experiences specifically to motivate behaviour, we can continue to inspire our customers, clients and staff.
Wilfred, Research and Development Lead
🎲 Team Living Theories 🎲
Living Theories was founded in 2016 by a team of designers, trainers and hardcore gamers, determined to harness the power of games to transform human engagement. The consultant team has worked with multiple organizations around the world to explore Gamification as a way to enhance people engagement experiences and functions.
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