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Nearby leaderboard
Effort: Medium
What to notice
Only your rank and your neighbors appear, with the gap to the next place.
How to build it
- Show the ranks around the user instead of the global top.
- Present the gap to the next rank as the next goal.
- Let people opt in to the leaderboard.
Measure
- Main metric
- Retry rate
- Guardrail
- Share who hide the leaderboard
When it backfires
Competing on volume alone invites low-quality activity.
Theory behind it
Social comparison and leaderboards
People judge their abilities against others. Leaderboards can draw out effort and can also deflate motivation.
Contested
Goal-gradient effect
People speed up as they get closer to a goal.
Well supported
Goal-setting theory
Specific, challenging goals lead to better performance than "do your best."
Well supported
Does gamification work?
Gamification is using game design elements outside games. Average effects are small to moderate and depend heavily on context and design.
Contested
Playable demos
Try the same mechanism in a playable demo.