Gamification Design: Capture the Monsters

• Client: LudoCraft Ltd

• Time Period: 09.2018 - 12.2018

• Role: Gamification Designer

• Responsibility: Design the gamfication concept / Conduct interviews with start-up experts

Background

The course Problem Solving Case 2, which aims to solve a practical problem for a client.

Diego, Mariam, Ishmael and I worked as a team for our client LudoCraft. Our task was to

design a game/gamification concept, which could support knowledge workers' collaboration and engagement.

As our team were interested in start-ups companies, we conducted interviews with start-up experts from BusinessOulu, Njetworking and Kielo growth, and their insights helped us better understand the collaboration issues in start-up companies. After brainstorming and comparing different topics, we decided to focus on team meetings, and our question was "How can we improve meetings and avoid boring everyone to death?"

Challenge

I was responsible for designing the gamification concepts in the team. For me, the biggest challenge was:

How to gamify meeting process to make it more engaging and productive?

Solution

The challenge was solved by developing the gamification concept of Capture the Monsters.

After studying the products and grounds for good meetings, I came up with an idea that we could characterize meetings as monsters and the team can beat the monsters by good collaboration. Later our team evolved this idea together. Below is our final solution: Capture the monsters!

Description of the game:

A group of monsters are coming, capture them by completing your meeting agenda on time!

In this game, a monster is generated based on a meeting agenda, the team's goal is to capture the monster by completing the agenda on time.

• If the team succeed, it will be rewarded with the captured monster and an Epic Win moment (Figure 5).

• After each meeting, the team receives an auto-generated meeting memo, which can help its members plan future meetings.

• The team members can check the dashboard for the meeting productivity.

In short, this is a gamification concept that can make meetings more productive and engaging.

Below are the details of the gamification concept:

1. Figure 1 displays the basic structure of our gamification concept.

Figure 1. Structure of our gamficaiton concept

2. Before the meeting, the team uses a meeting agenda to set tasks and roles (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Interfaces of Before the Meeting

3. During the meeting, the monster' health points (HP) will decrease when the team completes preset tasks on time. If the team can complete all the preset tasks on time, it will be rewarded with the captured monster and an Epic Win moment. If not, the monster will run away. (Figure 3 - Figure 5)

Figure 3. Interfaces of During the Meeting

Figure 4. Interfaces of During the Meeting

Figure 5. Interfaces of During the Meeting

4. After the meeting, the team members can check dashboard for meeting productivity. Also they receive an auto-generated meeting memo. (Figure 6)

Figure 6. Interfaces of After the Meeting

Results

1. In this course, our solution was rated as 5/5 ( 5 - Excellent ).

2. We made an interactive prototype, have a try! (Check out Figure 7)

Figure 7. Interactive prototype of Capture the Monsters

Wall of Gratitude

I would like to express my gratitude for the people involved in this project.

• My teammates Diego Guzman, Mariam Jabaly, and Ishmael Forson. Even though we had many differences and didn't always agree, each of you are always open-minded and supportive. Our different talents are the key to the success of this project.

• The Start-up experts, who gave us valuable inputs during our interviews.

• Our client, classmates and teachers, who gave valuable feedback to help us optimize the gamification concept

Thanks very much for your time and efforts and I really appreciate it!