Social Learning Theory posits that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling.
The Skylab Apps platform has been built operating under the Social Learning theory that has often been called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.
Gamification has gained traction in recent years as an effective way of engaging users to perform actions in contexts that would otherwise be considered tedious and undesirable. Education is an area in which user engagement could have the greatest impact on success, with some advantages for users to improve or get better comprehension. Our goal in doing so is to foster greater user engagement using the system and thereby promote an environment better suited for active social learning.
Skylab has built a Proprietary algorithm that places emphasis on commonly understood human habits and then leveraged technology to gamify the experience of Learning for example.
“It’s Play That Helps Us Do Serious Things Better.”
“When you have a Game Like Platform where knowledge is applied, knowledge becomes a resource. The more you know the better you are at the Game.”
In essence, it’s “Human-Focused Design” as opposed to “Function-Focused Design” Skylab has thought and developed The Gamification Engine The perfect blend of Science, Psychology and Technology.
Unconsciously, the key points below are enhanced in the user’s behavior through Gamification:
Epic Meaning & Calling
Core Drive is a player’s belief that he is doing something greater than himself or that he was “chosen” to do something. This creates a player who devotes a lot of his time to maintaining a forum or helping to create things for the entire community.
Development & Accomplishment
The internal motivation of making progress, developing skills, and eventually overcoming challenges drives community.
Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback
Users are engaged in a creative process of repeatedly figuring things out and trying different combinations. People need ways to express their creativity, and to be able to see the results of their creativity, receive feedback, and respond in turn.
Ownership & Possession
When a player feels ownership, he/she is motivated to make what he/she owns better and own even more. If a person spends a lot of time to customize his/her profile or his/her avatar, he/she automatically feels more ownership towards it too.
Social Influence & Relatedness
All the social elements that drive people, including: mentorship, acceptance, social responses, companionship, as well as competition and envy.
Scarcity & Impatience
The fact that people can’t get something right now motivates them to think about it all day long. Many games have Appointment Dynamics within them (come back 2 hours later to get your reward).
Unpredictability & Curiosity
Drive is wanting to find out what will happen next. If you don’t know what’s going to happen, your brain is engaged and you think about it often. This core drive is activated whenever a company runs a sweepstake or lottery program to engage users.
Users complete a series of steps to fulfill the challenge. Each step completed gives you a small reward, discount, or badge (e.g. 50% Discount at Starbucks). By completing all the steps you will earn the big reward. The goal here is to be the Pokemon Scavenger Hunt for businesses, thus getting people out of the house/office to capture their experiences in the real world.
App Sharing creates a virality effect that drives community growth for the client, sponsor awareness, and behavioural data for the brand.This is critical for our advertisers and Skylab’s business model; as our success is tied to the growth of the client’s audience and behavioural data. For the user, it provides a fun way to engage in the growth of the cause/movement, creating a deeper desire to belong.
Voting invites the user to share selfies or photos for a reward as they engage within a popularity contest. People get excited about the recognition and rewards inside a private community where they feel the odds are higher than social media. As they increase engagement within their community, they feed a desire to belong.
The overall goal of the App Sharing & Voting contest is to maximize the MAU/DAU (Monthly or Daily Active User) of their user base with gamification tactics, thus instantly increasing the value of the company.
At Skylab, Social Learning & Gamification are the Core Drive. They permit to empower the followings:
SOCIAL NETWORKS
It puts the learner at the center of the people, information, and learning content they need. Comments on content increase community knowledge and understanding as well as drive engagement.
STRENGTHENING TEAMWORK
Community content enhances collaboration. Notes, comments, and ratings specific to your organization improve communication among teams and the organization as a whole.
NIELSEN’S 1-9-90 RULE
According to expert Jakob Nielsen, 90% of participants don’t contribute, though they find value in what they read and observe. The next 9% add to existing discussions, with 1% creating most commentary and giving the community food for thought.
AMPLIFY THE LEARNING PROCESS
Social learning connects people with relevant content, learning assets, and expert information specific to an organization’s unique culture. This combination of content, commentary, and community amplifies learning and helps you maximize your return on learning investments.
CREATING NEW CONNECTIONS
Social learning offers access to colleagues outside an employee’s traditional sphere, which can spark innovation and leverage connections to employees they may not otherwise engage with.
SECURITY & PROTECTION
A good social learning platform protects your information, while allowing employees to find, create, and share knowledge, learning assets, and expertise with their colleagues – without compromising security.
Game elements that can facilitate learning
Social learning is often coupled with game mechanics when you want to take audience engagement to the next level. We define social learning as an online learning experience where learners are able to see what other learners are doing and control other learners’ gameplay or content. With social learning, you can send messages to other learners, challenge a colleague to a challenge, leave a souvenir, and even create content to change the learning experience. The most common form of social learning that you can implement is a leaderboard. Simply seeing how well other learners are doing can get your audience excited and motivated to take training over and over again.
Doing our jobs is serious business, but learning about it doesn’t have to be. We’ve helped innovative organizations around the world make learning that’s as addictive as Candy Crush.
Some of the potential benefits of successful gamification initiatives include:
giving users ownership of their learning
opportunities for identity work through taking on alternate selves
freedom to fail and try again without negative repercussions
chances to increase fun and joy
opportunities for differentiated instruction
making learning visible
providing a manageable set of subtasks and tasks
inspiring students to discover intrinsic motivators for learning
Imagine a platform that allows the owner to make changes to the Mobile App in real time across 3 native platforms without ever needing to resubmit to the App Store or Google Play.
This is what Skylab Apps has created. When CEO Dean Grey set out to build a white labeled social media app where the app owner had 100% autonomy and control he ran in to a big problem. How could we deliver a custom platform if the app owner cannot not make changes to the finished product at the speed of their business or their community’s growth?
To solve the problem, Skylab Apps built a “command center” and attached it to the scalable white labeled social media platform. In essence, it is the equivalent of leasing a new Ferrari and being able to reconfigure the color of the car itself or change the side of the car you would like the steering wheel on at anytime in “real time” making as many changes as you want.
Sounds impossible right? Well, it’s not. Skylab has built it. In fact the Skylab Appscommand center is so robust it gives the app owner the ability to customize the color, content, positioning and user tags… and that is only the beginning.
The idea is quite revolutionary. Skylab Apps has really built a platform, not an app. Uber is an app, you download it, use it and when the company updates it, you may see some changes. The Skylab Apps Platform is not Web based or HTML 5. The platform is built to work simultaneously across three platforms:
Web App (w/Command Center CMS Controls)
iOS
Android
The Skylab Apps Platform similar to Word press but for the Native Mobile App. To grasp just how big this idea is, you need to understand a little bit about the app development world itself.
15 years ago, it was somewhat difficult to build a website. There was no Squarespace or Shopify. These were ideas back then, and until the advent of WordPress, the chances of you developing a desirable and functioning website without coding knowledge or a computer science degree was about as likely as winning the lottery. At best, the chances of pulling it off on your own was slim to none. WordPress forged the path that changed all of this.
Wordpress was open source and allowed a community of developers to create software plug-ins making it easy for user to ultimately build a website quickly with no coding experience or computer science degree needed. Later on, some for profit companies like Squarespace and Shopify that have made the user experience even more seamless.
Skylab Apps set out to simplify the process for the end user delivering on the promise of a seamless mobile platform across all major interfaces that tackled and solved all of the major problems that exist in the mobile app development space today.
“Skylab has revolutionized the rapidly growing cheerleading industry by providing cheerleaders, coaches, and gym owners the best opportunity to train, learn, and develop their skill-set as they strive to become world class athletes. By utilizing the Skylab platform, we are now able to use gamification to connect a global industry, and the result is extraordinary.”
Alex McCarthy | 5-Time world Champion & CEO / Founder of The Cheer Apps
Big companies are catching on too! Skylab Apps has a growing list of some major clients including Amway,Allysian Health Sciences and Jack Canfield Companies. In addition to the mounting success of Skylab App, the are attracting some huge talent from companies like Walt Disney, UFC, Fan Duel and HITACHI. Take a look at the Executive team and check out the endorsements they have gotten so far, it is nothing short of amazing!
“Skylab Apps technology gives me the platform to engage with my community through chat, trainings, and recognition all while giving my community a place that isn’t bombarded with traditional social media noise.”
Apolo Ohno | Short Track Speed Skater and an eight time medalist in the Winter Olympics / Co-Founder of Allysian Sciences
Skylab Apps understand trends at cellular level.
“We do not guess, we spot the trends and strategize.”
–Dean Grey | Skylab Apps CEO
Here is some Quick History For you:
The internet became mainstream in 1999
WordPress was start in 2003
Today 27% of the internet is powered by Wordpress sites.
Mobile Apps are a $77 Billion Market currently and expected to grow to $101 Billion by 2020
The only tech out there even close to what the Skylab Apps platform does is already antiquated or at best years behind what has been created by Skylab.
For more information or to request a demo to see the platform, please visit www.Skylabapps.com
The number of mobile platform users today is greater than the number of desktop users!
Consequently, businesses have realized the need to effectively use mobile channels platform for attracting customers. They have started new operations (or scaled existing ones) through mobile websites and mobile apps.
“Mobile devices have already ingrained themselves into our daily lives and business are realizing that this is something that can work to their advantage.”
While businesses with large wallets can afford to employ both mobile websites and apps platform, other companies might have to choose one of them. The choice between mobile apps and websites depends on their cost, usability, required features and the audience they serve.
That being said, studies show that users prefer mobile apps platform more than mobile websites. This makes for a strong reason to have mobile apps for reaching out to potential (and existing) customers.
In addition, there are various other reasons, too, that make mobile apps better than mobile websites platform.
#1 Mobile Apps Offer Better Personalization
Personalization is about offering tailored communication – Smart Chat – to users based on their PIIP (Proximity, Identity, Interest and Performance)
“Personalization is critical in making a mobile User Experience delightful”
Anthony O’Donoghue
With mobile apps, it’s easy to treat users with a personalized experience.
Mobile apps can let users set up their preferences at the start, based on which users can be served with customized content. Apps can also track and observe user engagement, and use it to offer custom recommendations and updates to the users. Furthermore, they can also identify location of the users in real-time to provide geography-specific content.
However, improving user experience is not the only purpose that personalization serves. It can also help improve conversion rate of apps:
When users are pampered with personalized content, they have a higher chance of making a conversion.
At Skylab, visuals and layouts are customizable, but the underlying structure is stable & standard. This creates total control for the client – flexibility within a proven and tested framework.
This is a massively-disruptive model
#2 Ease of Sending Notifications
For the last couple of decades, email has been the most widely-used business communication tool. Businesses have extensively used email (some almost abused it) to reach out to their users. As a result, email has lost the effectiveness it once had; its open rates and click rates have constantly dropped.Well, there’s no reason to worry.
Push notifications
The notifications are of two types: push and in-app notifications. They both are exciting alternatives for communicating with app users in a less intrusive manner.
The ability to send instant, non-intrusive notifications to users is so desired that it is one of the major reasons why many businesses want to have a mobile app in the first place.
In-app notifications are the notifications which users can only receive when they have opened an app.
In-app notifications
Push notifications, on the other hand, are those notifications which users can receive regardless of any activity they are doing on their mobile device. There have been instances where the push medium of notifications has delivered click-through rates of 40%.
At Skylab, we’ve got the full suite: outside the app, inside the app, and a master control center.
Notifications are the primary way users get information about activity in their apps.
#3 Making Use of Mobile Device Features
Mobile apps have the advantage of utilising features of a mobile device like camera, contact list, GPS, phone calls, accelerometer, compass, etc.
Such device features, when used within an app, can make the user experience interactive and fun.
Moreover, these features can also reduce the efforts users would have to make otherwise. For instance, users completing a form on a banking app might need to submit their photograph for completion of the process. The app can let users take help of the camera of their mobile device to capture and submit a photograph.
“Apps can utilize native features of mobile devices to enhance User Experience.”
Anthony O’Donoghue
The device features can significantly shorten the time users take to perform a certain task in an app, and can even boost conversions.
Add-on: Mobile websites platform can also use some features of a mobile device like camera, GPS, etc. Still, there are technological constraints in utilizing all the multimedia features of a device (which mobile apps can use).
Skylab has worked in the development of BlowBunny app. We use the native features which had been shown above to create Voting Contest. It’s one of the Gamificationadd-on features that Skylab can provide.
You can see the most recent posts and -following customizable tabs- the Leaderboard with the actual ranking, your own posts and the winners from the past weeks.
This fun contest renews every so often – admin choose the timeframe – and the winner earns a reward!
Customize the How to Win screen to display the contest info and reward
#4 Ability to Work Offline
It is probably the most fundamental difference between a mobile website and an app.
Although apps too might require internet connectivity to perform most of their tasks, they can still offer basic content and functionality to users in offline mode.
“The beauty of mobile apps lies in their ability to work even in offline mode.”
Let’s take the example of banking app again.
The app can provide features like tax calculation, instalment calculation, and determination of loan limit. These features can work even without the help of an internet connection.
Add-on: Even though mobile websites platform can use caching to load web pages without an internet connection, they can only offer limited functions.
#5 Freedom in Designing
Even with all the technological advancements in web designing, mobile websites have to rely a lot on browsers to perform even the most elementary functions. Mobile websites depend on browser features like ‘back button,’ ‘refresh button,’ and ‘address bar’ to work.
Mobile Apps don’t have any of these restrictions.
A mobile app can be designed with a lot of elaborate functions, based on advanced gestures like ‘tap,’ ‘swipe,’ ‘drag,’ ‘pinch,’ ‘hold,’ and more.
Apps can use these gestures to offer innovative functionality that can help users perform a task better. For example, an app can let users move to a next or previous step using the swipe gesture.
Skylab gives you the ability to modify colors/branding + actions + bottom/side menu navigation.
#6 New Branding Experience
Since a mobile app is distinct from a company’s website, it has the liberty of offering a new branding experience to users. It means that the company can experiment with new branding styles for the app, which can be different from the regular brand style of the company’s website (or the company altogether).
Going a step further, companies can build mobile apps specifically to transition into a new brand style for themselves.
“Mobile apps can be used to create a distinguished brand for your product/service.”
Additionally, a mobile app can also allow users to customize its appearance, as per users’ liking. This can further help in the personalization front of the app.
Add-on: The concept of microsites work on similar lines. Microsites offer a distinct brand experience to users, as compared to their parent sites. They are often used to promote a sub-brand, an event, or a newly-launched service.
Skylab can implant a social media page and any website directly into the app. This enhances User Experience.
On this screenshot of the Allysian app, the Action-Buttons can be set in a different way and the different tabs at the bottom of the app as well
Allysian Science is One of the Skylab’s Clients. Its mission is to maximize human potential through advanced science and education, enabling people to become the best at whatever they choose to be.
Skylab provides to the Admin a wide Platform Settings Control as seen in the previous point. Admin can optimize and change the display as they wish.
Different courses and lessons about Allysian
The Brand story, aspirations, clients & partners, testimonies and others branding experience can be available with great refine design and layout on the app. New users can easily access to those in the Training tab. Each lesson give credit to the reader by just indicate that it has been completed. Each completed lesson will be displayed on the Recognition Wall where every users can like, comment and access to.
#7 Users Spend More Time on Apps
Mobile users spend 86% of their time on mobile apps and just 14% of the time on mobile websites.
“In today’s market, in order to be a successful company it is essential to go mobile”
Moreover, the average time users spend on mobile apps is also increasing — rising by 21% in 2015 from 2014.
Note: A point to consider here is that users spend a majority of their time on gaming apps and social media apps. Skylab has merged both of them to create a Gamified Social Media.
However, we also don’t have data telling us which mobile websites users visit more often (out of the 14% of their time mentioned above). Hence, it’s not possible to make a comparison.
#8 New Stream of Conversions
If you’re looking to increase conversions, mobile apps platform can be a great medium to push users down the conversion funnel.
Mobile apps can be used to acquire both top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) and bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) users.
For instance, utility apps can bring-in ToFu users, which can be later nurtured into BoFu leads. On the other hand, apps like eCommerce already have BOTF users, who have a higher possibility of converting.
Add-on: Since mobile apps are much more targeted in nature (through their content and utility), they can be used to tap specific users in the funnel. Mobile websites, in contrast, reach out to a diverse set of audience.
With Skylab, you already have a community of BoFu and ToFu. Those Users will jump on your app when it will be launched ! Companies focus on capturing new customers, but successful brands knows the importance of retaining & rewarding existing customers.
If your user base does not feel a compulsive need to check your app multiple times a day, you are unable to compete. We leverage this need for frequent engagement, exploration, and unpredictability.
#9 Brand Presence
Users spend a substantial amount of their time on mobile devices. It’s safe to say that many of the users encounter the apps they’ve installed on their devices, almost every day. This regular encounter can be viewed as a branding opportunity for the apps. For the record, a study shows that U.S consumers spend 5 hours on their mobile each day !
Even when users are not actively using a mobile app, they are still reminded of the brand associated with the app. The icon of the app acts like a mini-advertisement for the brand.
“Mobile app icons can work like innovative ad-banners.”
The Allysian Logo is its Brand’s Identity
The presence of an app on a user’s device helps influence user’s perception about a brand, subconsciously.
All of these Apps’ Logos become their own Brand Presence
This user behaviour can be linked to the Signal Detection Theory, which suggests that users process even those ads which they’ve ignored at some level in their minds.
With Skylab platform, we have implanted a GamificationEngine with gamified features to add value on what is already on the mobile market. This increases the companies’ value.
#10 Apps Can Work Faster Than Websites
A well-designed mobile app can perform actions much quicker than a mobile website.
Apps usually store their data locally on mobile devices, in contrast to websites that generally use web servers. For this reason, data retrieval happens swiftly in mobile apps.
Apps can further save users’ time by storing their preferences, and using them to take proactive actions on users’ behalf.
There is also a technical justification as to why mobile apps can work faster.
Mobile websites use javascript code to perform most of their functions. And the framework that mobile apps use can run almost five times faster than a javascript code!
“So, mobile websites are technically slower than mobile apps!”
While all this is happening in the background, users get to complete actions quicker on the front-end of mobile apps, again contributing to a delightful user experience.
Mobile App v/s Mobile Site — What Should You Choose?
Developing both mobile website and mobile app for your business can prove to be a costly affair. You might have to choose one of the two channels, based on your budget and business goals. While both channels have their own pros and cons, mobile apps, especially, can help you get higher conversions. Mobile apps offer greater personalization and operational efficiency, along with multiple other exclusive features.
At Skylab apps, we provide Mobile & App platform according to the client’s needs. We also bring an essential interest to the native features and add-on features which mobile platform can provide and support (Smart Chat, Notifications, Smart Tags…). Skylab has truly understood and incorporated all of these points we’ve just gone through.