Gamification a promising and untapped market: MDeC: Page 2 of 3

Gamified apps: Terato Tech

Terato Tech was incorporated in September 2008, and accorded MSC Malaysia status a year later. Specialising in mobile app development, the company now has about 40 people, with offices in Bandar Baru Bangi in Malaysia, Singapore, and San Jose in California.
 
Its customers include Malaysia Airlines, the Yellow Pages, CIMB, Bank, Maybank, UMW and Nokia, according to its managing director Reza Razali.
 
“As [Ng] Wan Peng noted, gamification is the process of using game thinking to solve problems and game mechanics to engage users,” he said. “Gamification is basically to influence someone to take action.”
 
Reza said that Terato Tech is serious about using gamification in developing its apps, and to do so, defines four ‘gamer personality’ types: Killers, Achievers, Socialisers and Explorers, with some elements common amongst them.
 
Killers, he said, like to compete and win, love challenges and overcoming obstacles, and are more strategic in their approach. Achievers are similar to Killers in terms of strategy and overcoming challenges, but also love to investigate and interpret.
 
Socialisers, for their part, love to cooperate and communicate, imagine and personalise; while Explorers love to explore, imagine, interpret, collect and learn.
 
Terato Tech keeps these personality types in mind when designing its apps, according to Reza.
 
As an example, its health and fitness app Move & Burn, available on the iOS and Android platforms, appeals to Killers and Achievers.
 
“It is in the top five in its category in Singapore, Australia and Canada,” he claimed. “It helps you track how much calories you use up, and even motivates you to burn a certain number of calories per day.
 
“What’s unique about Move & Burn compared with other similar fitness apps, is that we don’t try to measure how many calories you’re taking in, but how many calories you move or burn,” he added.
 
In terms of the two gamer personality types, Killers are drawn to the app’s leaderboard which shows their rank amongst their Facebook friends, while Achievers gain access to badges.
 
In addition to the consumer-facing Move & Burn, Terato Tech has also built a dual-facing app: Slurp, which combines a consumer-facing ordering app with a backend point-of-sale (POS) system.
 
“Slurp, launched just two months ago, is basically a POS system, but we integrated gamification elements into it,” Reza said.
 
“It’s a POS app that also enables customer-ordering features, but can also be used just as a POS system,” he said.
 
Terato Tech is targeting the food and beverage (F&B) industry with Slurp. To plumb its full depth, customers would need to download the app from the Apple or Android app stores.
 
On the consumer-facing front, Slurp appeals to Socialisers and Explorers.
 
“It motivates you to make your own orders to gain access to badges that give you real rewards, like discounts,” said Reza. These badges are awarded by the merchants to their customers.
 
“It allows F&B outlets to reward and retain customers, and also upsell other items – say, to order a dessert after your meal, perhaps at a special discount for you, since badges are unique to the customer,” he added.
 
Slurp has been adopted by 10 outlets within the Klang Valley, although Reza admitted downloads of the consumer-facing app are less than 200.
 
“It takes time to modify behaviour,” he said. “But it also works as a normal POS system, and merchants do not need customers to download the app for it to be used this way.”
 
The outlets Terato Tech now has are small cafes and restaurants, but its target market is really upmarket, ‘hipster cafes.’
 
“We just got two such outlets in Bangsar South, but have not installed [the system] yet,” said Reza, adding that Terato Tech will be exploring the ‘hipster café’ market after the Muslim holy month of Ramadhan is over.
 
Like Move & Burn, Slurp is available for iOS and Android; with Reza saying that there are no plans to expand to other platforms at the moment.
 
Next Page: How to gamify your internal processes