An example of an event’s gamification with Line@ app

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Author Dr. Flavio Escribano > @ludictador

Spanish Version here

Download the Full Report here

Introduction

On April 23th, we participated on the INNGames 2015 videogames festival to test a very innovative system called LINE@ in order to research gamification experiences with this app. The challenge consisted of gamifying one event’s workshop attended by very active groups of young people who like to participate in extracurricular activities, especially ones which don’t look like standard classes. Hence the challenging question was: How to keep all of those 13 to 16 years old teenagers focussed on a relatively complex content?

Usually high school teaching is one-way only, and some teachers are happy delivering all the information to the students who must learn, store, understand and finally (and where required) put it into practice. One of the key learning processes is to transform all that information into an interesting experience, trying to convince the student body it is very useful, easy to learn, emotional and exciting.

In our case and during INNGAMES celebration we were facing both an experimental and diverse situation, that is, for the first time the vast majority of the students would enjoy a workshop about the videogames making process. What in the first instance could be experienced as an exciting, enjoyable and good time because of the fun topic, could become a boring and irritating time because of the complexity of the delivered concepts about the videogames making process itself.

Uso de LINE@ durante la conferencia-workshop de Francisco Javier Soler (Maki), profesor de UTAD
Using LINE@ during Francisco Javier Soler’s workshop

During the gamification conceptualization phase some answers and possibilities emerged. As a conclusion it was deemed necessary to reach the audience in a very direct way using elements which already exist as part of their common communication system. It was clear to us that we need to use their most common used internet device, the smartphone, with around 100% market penetration in the profiles we were dealing with. Furthermore, due the setup timetable and budget it was impossible to do a specific development for the initiative.

After reading some articles about both the storytelling capabilities of LINE instant messaging app and the huge market penetration in target profiles (13 to 16 years old teenagers) we decided to test some of the communication functionalities of the new corporate tool LINE@. Thanks to this new platform it was possible to send out some questions and challenges due to its automated system of keywords identification and participation coupons generation. The platform enabled us to setup a very rich communication with attendees thanks to its graphical layout with both stickers and custom-made designs for prizes announcements.

INNGAMES

INNGAMES is an event organized by INJUVE (the Spanish government agency for youth) in order to improve the employability of youth people for the new digital jobs and, in particular, on the videogames sector. Because the event depends on an agency which is very worried about youth participation in society it was very important to find new ways to communicate with these young people on the new spaces (real or virtual ones) they use, we need to obtain the best results through figuring out the best diffusion channels.

The LINE Platform

LINE is an instant messenger and social network platform with more 500 million of registered users all around the world and revenue of more than $600 million.

This app is very popular in Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, some Latin American countries and Europe, most of the users are our target profile (young people and teenagers) for INNGAMES.

On the other hand LINE@ (still in Beta version) is the new communication tool for organizations (both companies and institutions) by LINE Corporation. This platform improves the massive communication and also automates the users-clients interaction processes with some other complementary functionalities such as keywords identification, automated personalized answering and prizes and coupons awarding.

Our Goals / Objectives

The main objectives were the information retention by the attendees at the learning conferences at INNGAMES as well as the minimization of the dropout rate of attendees. Furthermore, we also wanted to stimulate the active participation in a type of experience that usually is unidirectional.

Production

For more details about gamification design and production we truly recommend to download the following report here.

Results

To summarize we can say thanks to LINE@ we have obtained a high level of participation during the workshop. Up to 22,3% of the attendees subscribed to the INNGAMES LINE Channel (156 students of 700), they remained very active in participation and answered all the questions even when a lot of these were very difficult. Of the 16 questions sent we received 335 correct answers.

It should be noted that during the first session there were no dropouts from the learning presentation’s room, the gamification activity took place smoothly and questions were sent every 3-4 minutes in synchronization with the content of the conference. However the second session (shorten than the first) due to a technical problem the questions were not sent until after the first half and during that time there were 15 dropouts. We cannot be sure this problem was the reason (having no interaction) which led some participants to drop out, but during the first sessions nobody left.

Line Gamification statistics

Conclusions

Retention numbers were higher than 20% and this is very remarkable considering LINE is not the most popular instant messaging tool. The number of correct answers was very large, and it should be noted that the platform doesn’t keep statistics of incorrect answers. Based on this information we point out the attendees’ participation was very high.

Finally, we would like to emphasize the benefits of using instant messaging tools with gamification components like LINE@, and therefore enabling us to develop a transparent and fluid educational gamification experience and a very cost-effective one.