How to gamify the use of Le Chat to boost engagement and retention
Le Chat is struggling to retain users: only 1 in 30 people who used Le Chat continue to use it daily after one month. The founders believe that gamification is an interesting avenue to explore in order to boost retention. Study project carried out during the bootcamp with The Design Crew.
How to gamify the use of Le Chat to boost engagement and retention
Ideation
We analysed competing applications, such as Chat Gpt, Claude, and Perplexity, as well as the mechanisms used by applications that employ gamification to boost retention, such as Headspace, Duolingo, and Strava.
This step enabled us to
To generate ideas for solutions, from which we selected principles that favour mechanisms rewarding the qualitative aspect of chatbot usage rather than the quantity of usage.
This choice was crucial in order to elevate the service rather than distort its value proposition.
Solution
Do our users understand and engage with the gamification system?
Tests carried out on 5 people:
2 women / 3 men, aged between 30 and 45, 4/5 of whom are regular users of AI chat.
Iteration
We have selected the simplest possible solutions in technical terms in order to resolve the main pain points identified during testing.
- Made the reward mechanisms more transparent with micro-animations at key moments
- Gathered gamification data in the place where testers intuitively looked for it
- Simplified the gamification principles and improved guidance between screens
- Remove mechanisms interrupting the user's main action
This solution must be tested in order to confirm the choices made regarding the solution iteration.
What's the next step ?
This experience made me realize
That Product Design for AI chatbots must be considered from a broader perspective in order to englobe the chatbot's responses.
Will this be the future of product design ?
To design the thinking part underneath the AI chatbot : the part that really matters
For exemple, designers could :
- Help decide what information AI learns from, to make sure AI learns about different cultures, languages, and perspectives—not just one view of the world.
- Figure out the right balance between helpful memory and creepy surveillance
- Shape whether AI feels like a helpful friend, a professional assistant, or a careful advisor (On this way, but still to be improved for the user's benefit)
- Create clear ways for people to understand what AI is doing on their behalf. Design "undo" systems ? Why not !
The opportunity is there to shape the future of product design in a world where AI use is spreading fast
Source : Designers Have to Move from the Surface to the Substrate by Suff Syed, Former Head of Design @ Microsoft
Team
Parnership with
Group project completed in two weeks, co-designed as part of The Design Crew's Product Design bootcamp.
Antoine Michaud
Product Designer
