Gamification has been around for a long ol’ time. Garmin have this year cottoned onto the fact that rewarding people, with virtual badges and arbitrary numbers, gives their customers an additional sense of achievement and progress over their activities.

And it works. It’s the equivalent of patting a dog on the head. “Who’s a good boy for doing 20 thousand steps today? You are. Yes you are”.

And I lap it up.

My goal was to reach Level 4. I don’t know how many levels there are and I don’t know how I stand against the vast masses of people that using Garmin to track their activities, but against my own (whopping) 7 connections, I’m nearly 90 points ahead from the second person (I’m not boasting, but this leads to a point).

The genius of gamification is that it asks you to do things you wouldn’t normally do. And that might mean taking a few more steps each day to reach a particular target, or do enough steps each day to reach a new goal. Or try a new sport. Or go further in a sport than you have before. There are also some badges that encourage you to compete with others.

It would take 40 marathons (8 points each) to reach level 5

It took me a little over 3 months to reach my level 4 goal from April to mid July. And it felt great. But now I’m stuck. I’ve collected most of the badges that I can easily gather, and I have sights on collecting a few more later this year and next, but there are no easily repeatable badges that will help nudge me on into the Level 5.

And this is where I’m starting to become disillusioned. I’ve done what I can do within reasonable expectation. I’ve taken to cycling more to get a few more badges, been taking more steps each day and I’ve nailed a few more marathons to up the points, but as the above image, I now need 20 marathons, or other 8 point repeatable activities, to hit the next level.

What Garmin could do to keep my interest

  • More badges
  • More repeatable badges
  • Repeating the same badge, 3 marathon badge, 10 marathon badge etc.
  • Prestige, where my level gets wiped and I start all over again (but collect a prestigious badge)
  • Connect me with other people who are of a same level for competitions and challenges (it’s so hard to make connections in Garmin. Strava is infinitely easier in this respect)

Overall, it was a lot of fun to attain the level 4 status. It means nothing to anyone else, but I enjoyed it and it was a nice free perk. But for Garmin to keep my attention, they need to add more attainable steps (levels) to keep me engaged.

Here are the badges that helped me earn level 4