Competition design pattern

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Problem summary

When sharing the same environment, we'll strive to attain things that cannot be shared

Usage

Use to energise your target audience into concerted action

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Solution

Leverage our natural drive to compete to motivate users to adopt a target attitude or behavior. Competiition energizes and prompts participants to invest time and effort as they care about the outcome. In many situations, no extrinsic motivator (reward) is need to motivated as the competition in itself is both energizing and motivating.

Boost engagement. Being in a competition, its participants focus on their outcome will match competitors. This in turn boosts their engagement and activity.
Incentivise self-improvement. Competition remains a great mechanism to provide incentives for self-improvement as achieving the best outcome often requires introspection.
Mind the group. If used among individuals, be careful about recognizing one person at the expense of the group.

Rationale

Competition is a great mechanism to provide incentives for self-improvement. Consider what people might be competing for within your system: attention or resources? Competition can be among individuals or groups, and goals can be opposing, shared, or even complementary.

Competition motivates engagement in two ways: internally, by utilising our urge to understand and think, and externally by utilizing our need for social status.