Work that changed behaviour
Recruitment games, a smart city app, a board game that sells cyber insurance and learning journeys people finish. Each one started with a behaviour that was not happening, and a goal the person actually had.
Attract a more diverse workforce
A submarine adventure that lets candidates try the role
Greener commuting through a gamified app
Peer challenges for citizens within 7 km of work
Hacksagon, a board game that sells cyber insurance
Award winner at GamiCon Chicago
Nine pieces of work, and what happened
Finding the right people for factory roles
A pharmaceutical company needed more candidates for factory positions, but wanted people who shared their values and genuinely wanted the work, not simply more applications.
- Sector
- Pharmaceutical manufacturing
- What we built
- Interactive digital recruitment games
- Aim
- Make the roles visible and relatable
What it does
- Brings the employer brand values to life before anyone applies
- Lets candidates try the kind of work rather than read about it
Carbon 0 Commute
A smart city wanted fewer emissions and healthier commuting. Awareness campaigns were not shifting behaviour, so we designed a gamified app for citizens living within 7 km of work or school.
- Mechanic
- Peer-to-peer challenges
- Learning
- Pilot showed people needed carbon education first
- Status
- App is available for sale
What happened
- An educational onboarding sequence was added after the pilot
- Young people were motivated to use it, and several smart cities showed interest
Hacksagon, cyber insurance sales
Cyber insurance is hard to sell because the risk is abstract. We turned the training into a board game agents play, so the conversation with a client becomes concrete.
- Format
- Physical board game and play money
- Award
- Excellence in No-tech Gamification Design, GamiCon Chicago
- Since
- Expansion packs keep it current
What it changed
- Agents got clear talking points for sales conversations
- Training became an experience people repeat rather than sit through
A VIP masterclass that moved online
Covid stopped a search engine running its in-person VIP masterclass for agency resellers. We designed a six-week gamified learning journey that kept the impact.
- Length
- Six weeks
- Mechanics
- Milestones, unlocking content, implementation competition
- Focus
- Completion and real-world application
Results
- 90% completed all the learning materials
- 80% completed every task for certification and the branded merchandise pack
A referral programme people wanted to join
A financial institution had a referral scheme with rewards that nobody used. Consumer focus groups told us why: clients wanted team and community rewards, closer to what the brand already stood for, rather than individual prizes.
- Method
- Consumer focus groups first
- Change
- Team and community rewards
- Aim
- Participation and new client acquisition
The Habit Building Playbook sets out how we design this work
An online world for parents facing school exclusion
Parents of excluded children have to navigate the education system, the legal process and the route back into school, often in a second language and against technical wording that is hard to read. The charity had grown from London to all of England and Wales, and its staff were handling every case one at a time.
- Sector
- Education charity
- What we built
- An interactive online world
- Aim
- Support more parents without more staff
What it does
- Walks a parent through the process with simple questions, one step at a time
- E-learning modules that explain their rights and what happens next
- Downloadable documents for applications and the legal process
- A design plain enough that a child can help their parent use it
A mini-game that makes CO2 visible to children
Carbon dioxide is invisible, which makes it hard to teach. Primary school children were being asked to care about something they could not see or experience, so the science stayed abstract.
- Sector
- Climate education
- What we built
- A mini-game on car exhaust emissions
- Aim
- Turn an invisible gas into cause and effect
What happened
- It became part of a wider climate awareness campaign
- Curiosity went up, with children asking more questions about pollution
- Teachers used it to make sustainability lessons interactive
Pitch Reality, a board game about investor bias
Around 2% of investor capital goes to female business owners. At the Stockholm Tech Fest Hackathon we looked at one reason behind that gap: research shows male founders tend to get opportunistic questions about growth, while female founders get preventative questions about risk, which pushes them into defending rather than selling.
- Origin
- Stockholm Tech Fest Hackathon
- Award
- Won the Stockholm Invest category
- Status
- Developed into a fully playable game
What it changed
- Players learn to tell a preventative question from an opportunistic one
- Real-time feedback shows how an answer moves investor confidence
- Peer feedback sets the investment each player receives, so the learning is social
- End-of-game debates about the funding gap ran so long we had to manage them
A card deck for explaining game design to non-gamers
Most of the people who commission a gamified solution do not play games. Abstract talk about mechanics and dynamics loses them, and the brief suffers for it.
- Sector
- Consulting and workshops
- What we built
- A practical game design card deck
- Aim
- Make design choices concrete in a room
What it changed
- Clients can see and handle the options instead of imagining them
- Workshops produce sharper briefs because the choices are tangible
- Conversations move from what is possible to what fits this audience
What clients say about working with us
We have been working with An and the Gamification Nation team for the past year and it has been a total pleasure to have her on the 5App team. An provides a refreshingly different perspective to our strategy work, adding value throughout the lifetime of the project. Her ideas and innovative approaches have informed and challenged our thinking in all the right ways.
Gill FroodHead of Marketing, 5app.com
As a work-based training company, we must motivate, engage and arm our clients with the skills they need to succeed in their careers. Previously that was not the case: we had a 3 out of 10 completion rate and it was evident our clients were not enjoying their journey with us. We started looking into gamification and approached Gamification Nation to help us improve our training material and system. We are delighted we made that decision. We now have a 9 out of 10 completion rate and our clients are enjoying the whole process through to the end. We highly recommend Gamification Nation.
Laila IbrahimCEO, GradPrentice
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