It seems a hohum experience for the user

– Have you considered some sort of lightbox pop-up telling the user they just got a badge/award which might then allow Social Sharing?

Yes, we have talked about something like this for a later version and also email notifications. This would probably be rolled into the core plugin or as a separate add-on.

– Oh, I thought there was suppose to be a BuddyPress Profile tab for Awards/Badges which I don’t see

There is but only members that have earned achievements see it. Until they earn something they don’t get to see it. =)

– Oh, I thought there was suppose to be a BuddyPress Profile tab for Awards/Badges which I don’t see

With BuddyPress, BadgeOS and BadgeOS Community Add-on enabled, visit your Achievement Type menu in in BadgeOS, and check the boxes to enable badge visibility on Activity Streams and/or BuddyPress Profiles. Selected Achievements will appear accordingly. Achievements will appear on a user’s profile once they earn an achievement (the tab does not appear until they have at least one achievement.)

I mean, you wouldn’t know you get one unless the widget is running and you notice a new addition or have I missed a setting?

The widget is helpful, as is the real-time Credly email notification if you have Credly enabled for a given badge.

Keep in mind that BadgeOS is designed as an underlying “operating system” for achievement-based use of WordPress sites. Each site owner may have a different approach to how or when they want to notify users of new achievements. In each build of BadgeOS we’ve implemented for organizations, site owners have had completely different approaches to how they wish to notify users. No single approach has emerged yet.

As with most features added to BadgeOS and as add-ons, we learn from all installations and try to abstract and extract features that will work across as many use cases as possible.

I am confident you will see additions in the way of additional support for achievement notification, and we’ll do so in a way that still allows each site owner to decide what works for them in their context.

Thanks for your feedback. It’s valuable as we continue to grow BadgeOS!