Setting out on a mobile quest to further explore the incorporation of gamification in technologies that set out to improve our lives, I came across Habitica and Habitify- also called habit trackers or affectionately known as pocket-sized motivators. Defined as daily routine and goal trackers, these apps promise to help you break bad habits and foster better ones. You select activities and objectives for yourself e.g. maybe you plan to read a chapter of a book every day, simply schedule it in the app with a timed reminder and have your digital cheerleader help you on the journey of accomplishing your goals. There is even integration with Siri or the Apple Watch to help keep you on track. Their secret to success? Gamification has been built into the design of the apps to help keep you motivated to finish your tasks as you complete streaks and monitor your progress. Habitica in particular seems to have delved deeply into some of gamification design principles as you even start the app by creating an avatar and follow an intro which feels like a retro video game. I will be trialing these apps for myself the next week to see whether I agree with others when they say these apps as life-changing and will report on Sunday on my experiences and whether it has made an impact on my daily routine or not.
Some screenshots of Habitica…
I won’t comment right now on Habitify or Habitica and the power of a mobile app to influence my daily habits but will wait till Sunday to report back on my week-long experiment of using these apps.
It’s almost been a week that I have trialed Habitify and Habitica and here are my thoughts. Habitify has a very sleek and professional look about it but it’s daily notifications hardly had me bat an eyelid and so I am sad to say that it didn’t really help turn any of my bad habits around. Perhaps I really needed to be more committed before engaging with the app. If I had interacted with it more and kept to my daily challenges then the graphs and daily progress made might have swayed me to keep on working hard on changing my ways. Habitica on the other hand was a lot of fun and I really liked interacting with this app. I don’t want to proclaim any wonders here but it really did make me feel guilty for indulging in my daily chocolate treat and I had second thoughts on reaching out for my dessert by the third day of using the app. I even managed to beat my bad habit for a day or two during the week- progress!! The fun and gamified interface is what I think had me coming back for more. The personal avatar I had created and the power and health bars that were influenced by my daily activities helped me create a connection with the little character meant to represent me. It felt very similar to caring for a tamagotchi (those digital pets most of us had growing up, or am I giving away my age here)… I will actually keep Habitica installed on my phone and actively pursue making use of its services.