The dacadoo platform uses (so-called “gamification”) which is a term used to describe the use of game design techniques, game thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts. It works by making technology more engaging, by encouraging users to engage in desired behaviors, by showing a path to mastery, by helping to solve problems, and by taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming. Applying these principles in a health & lifestyle context can make for a powerful end user experience.
Changing behavior represents a huge opportunity to improve health outcomes.
dacadoo is convinced that the combination of mobile technologies with social networking and gamification principles has the power to facilitate healthy lifestyle behavior change in individuals.
dacadoo applies gamification principles in various ways across the platform to engage users and encourage them to adopt a healthier lifestyle:
Achievements
It is important to recognize active engagement and the progress of users. As a result, dacadoo created a number of achievements and rewards in specific activities to provide that “pat on the back” feedback.
In the Achievement tab, you can find an overview of all achievement categories. For every achievement earned, the system awards “gamification” points but these achievement points are for motivational and reward purposes only.
Achievement points do not count towards your dacadoo health score.
For certain achievements you receive additional rewards. Rewards can be:
- a title that can be displayed on your profile
- a pin that can be displayed next to your profile
- a wallpaper you can download and use on your desktop or Smartphone.
Your earned rewards can be found in the Profile tab under “Rewards”.
An example of a personal wallpaper reward for a running achievement:
Achievements appear in the news feed on the home page and can be shared via social media as well (Users can define these settings under “Sharing” in the “Profile” tab).
Leagues
Leagues engage users in more direct competition than Achievements but less direct competition than Challenges.
When you join the leagues, you are initially assigned to the Bronze league. Depending on the effort you put into an activity over a sustained period of time, you can get promoted to a higher league. Promotion (and demotion) are automatic, and ensure that you are always competing with members you have a fair chance of competing with. Achievements are awarded both for being promoted to a league and finishing a season in a league. Do not forget to join again for the next season as this allows you to keep your league rating.
A dacadoo user needs to complete three workouts in a specific fitness activity to be able to join that League. Leagues are broken down by League type, activity type and division. Leagues run over seasons that last 3 to 4 months each.
Leagues have a defined structure and they are run by and have a ranking per:
- League: Users start in the “Bronze” League and can be promoted to “Silver”, “Gold” and “Platinum” Leagues based on hidden rating
- Domain: the specific fitness activity such as Running, Walking, Cycling, etc.
- Division: Divisions are opened when enough users are present, starting normally with division “Earth”. If enough users are participating, the division automatically opens to “Continent”, then to “Country” and finally on “City” level
- Season: currently a season lasts for 3 to 4 months. At the end of a Season top ranked individuals can move on to compete in the next League (Silver, Gold, Platinum)
Lots of achievements and rewards are linked to the league system. League promotions are shown in the news feed. You can earn achievements for promotion to a higher league and for finishing a league season in top ranked positions.
The leagues rating is an exponentially smoothed representation of the normalized power transfered by the user with fitness activities, where the normalized power is calculated by taking the normalized energy and dividing it by the the total calendar time elapsed, including calendar time not spent with fitness activities. This provides a good indication of the intensity at which each user performs activities. The rating is never shown in the user interface.
dacadoo Members are assigned to leagues as follows:
League Rating
Bronze Top 100% – Top 70%
Silver Top 70% – Top 40%
Gold Top 40% – Top 10%
Platinum Top 10%
Promotion thresholds are calculated per league activity by gathering the rating of all members, sorting the ratings, and taking the value at the respective percentile positions. The promotion thresholds are updated once a day.
Challenges
Challenges are the most direct way to compete with other users on the dacadoo health platform.
dacadoo users can create their own challenges and invite their friends to them by following a simple ‘create challenge’ wizard. A user can also mark the challenge as “open”, meaning the challenge is visible to the friends of the user and they can join without an explicit invite. The other way to participate in challenges is to accept challenge invites from a friend, colleague or dacadoo.
dacadoo has also launched Public Challenges that are organised by dacadoo and are open to all users on the platform to compete in for actual prizes.
Please note that only GPS-enabled activities tracked via the dacadoo Tracker app (available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry in the respective App Stores) or other fitness tracking devices (tracks to be imported in TCX or GPX file format) are counted towards challenges today. Manual entry of a fitness activity does count. The only challenge category in which manual entry is valid is the “All Fitness” challenge.
Levels
Progression dynamics in form of Level-Systems are integral part of the dacadoo health platform.
A new user starts at Level 1 and will gradually progress and rise in levels along the way. Levels are determined by the activity points a user has earned. Activity points are rewarded for tracking workouts, earning achievements, and commenting on news items.
Currently dacadoo has activated 10 seniority levels from 1 (beginner) to 10 (expert).
