Gamification stuff we love: design thinking workshops
When we reach the design phase of a project, the workshops start bringing a concept to life. I always enjoy hosting them. The aim is to have many users and perspectives take part in constructing a new learner, employee or customer journey. Everyone no matter how young or mature has ideas. In the corporate sector those ideas are often overlooked or sidelined for other priorities. When given the opportunity to express and contribute with an easy to follow framework, then it also becomes a powerful and productive tool in a gamification design project.
Yesterday was the second such workshop I held for a client and the energy that came from the discussions on what to include and what not to include was great to see. For the team that is running the project internally, they often find it confirms their thinking or puts some of it into question. That is exactly what design thinking should be about.
I have been running these workshops since I started the business for all of my clients and also at conferences. The starting point is always a clear statement of the problem we are trying to address for example we have a corporate learning academy online but people are not using it. With clients we would have already done user behaviour and motivational analysis so we can use the profiles from research to focus on designing engagement steps. I typically use a 4 phase journey: attraction, engagement, nurturing and end-game. The teams have a chance then to design approaches that will fit those phases.
The result is always high energy, because people feel they can express themselves, contribute and influence a journey. When it is tied to a corporate objective and a real problem, most workshop participants will have some or a lot of experience in this area. So it is great to see the input. Once the workshop has been held it is important to keep people informed in what is happening and what is actually being implemented.
It is one of the most enjoyable steps in my work with clients and the secret to good gamification design in my book.
