Community engagement was a persistent challenge for many community owners. Our research, including a customer questionnaire, revealed that gamification was the most requested feature and one of the top reasons for churn.
Competitor analysis showed that other platforms successfully leveraged gamification to drive engagement, offering features like points, leaderboards, and rewards that encouraged continuous interaction. Many community owners considered switching to these platforms due to the lack of similar tools in our product.
To address this, we introduced gamification not only to reduce churn but also as a strategic business move to drive upgrades to higher-tier plans. By integrating gamification with workflows, we provided advanced automation capabilities that made the feature significantly more powerful. Community owners on premium plans could create custom engagement loops, automate rewards, and tailor the experience to their needs, while the basic version offered essential functionality. This approach positioned gamification as a key driver for both user retention and business growth.
As the Senior Product Designer, I led the end-to-end UX design for the Gamification system at Circle, shaping how communities engage through incentives and rewards. My work focused on defining the points, levels, and rewards mechanics, ensuring they seamlessly integrated into Circle’s community workflows.
I collaborated closely with key stakeholders, and engineers to create an engagement system that is both scalable and customizable, allowing admins to tailor incentives to their unique communities.
By introducing a structured incentive system with points, levels, and automated rewards, we addressed this need directly. As a result, engagement increased by 8%, as members actively participated to earn rewards. Retention improved by 3%, with users returning to progress through levels and unlock perks. Additionally, the churn rate decreased by 11%, demonstrating that gamification provided the motivation needed to keep members engaged and reduce drop-off.