Creating a gamified experience for a B2B event
Together with a team of six I designed a gamified experience for the More Than Training Company's Time Well Spent event whose main speaker was the pioneer of Experience Economy, B. Joseph Pine II. As a Project Lead I focused on enabling the team to do their best, utilizing each of their unique strengths, and ensuring everyone was heard and got to participate. I did the visual execution for our experience, which got a lot of positive feedback. During the day of the event, I helped the team set up the experience, welcome and help the guests, hosted Pine himself and participated in the workshop he held for us.
Project details
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3 weeks
Me, Nataliia Chernova , Valter Biscaia da Silva Filho, Macarena Jiménez Nogales, Riina Immonen, Vanja Kärkäs, Pipsa Pullola
Project Lead
Hybrid
Practices
Methods & Tools
Experience Design, Gamification, Project Management
Brainstorming, Ideation, Legos, Experience Economy, Experience Realms, Progression of Economic Value, Canva
Background
I had met Janne Kolehmainen, one of the partners behind More Than Training Company, a few years back as he was a customer of a company I worked for. He was impressed by my customer service skills and can-do attitude while I was taking care of them. We ended up talking about Experience Design and how he is one of the two Experience Design Masters certified by B. Joseph Pine II, how I studied it in Haaga-Helia, and how my teacher Violeta Salonen was my main teacher in Haaga-Helia UAS and they two should meet.
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They did meet a few years later - both extremely busy professionals - and ended up with an idea of Violeta gathering a team to create an experience for MTTC's Time Well Spent event. Violeta hand picked six students and asked me to join as an alumni, to be their Project Lead and showcase my expertise in the field. Pine would be the main speaker of the event and we would get to meet him as well - the person whose insights, knowledge, theories and frameworks we were taught at school. Of course I said yes.
Quick Navigation
Starting the project
We gathered together to meet each other for the first time and hear more about the project. We got an overview of what the was event about, what was happening during the day, how many guests were going to be there and what kind of people were coming so we knew who we were designing for, and who are the stakeholders and partners of the event. We also got to hear what we would be doing during the day of the event itself. These were mainly related to helping set up the premises, welcome and guide guests, ensure everything is running smoothly, facilitate our own experience, and participate in the workshop Pine would be facilitating for everyone.
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The main theme of the event was Edutainment - meaning Entertaining and Educating. Our experience would be 30 minutes long, and repeated 3 times for the guests, in groups of 10. There were 2.5 weeks until the day of the event, so tight schedule, budget and resources. Just another day in event production!
Time for ideation
We began the ideation right away the next day in Zoom. Our first idea was to begin with some kind of ice breaker task, a quick exercise to get the guests to relax. It could be something like the multiple quick drafts, where you don't have time to stress about being good or perfect, you just do. The topic could be for example telling about yourself and your company in the quick sketches. This would continue, so that everyone would choose one of the drafts and turn it into business card visuals. After creating the visuals the cards would be given around for others, who would write a slogan, sentence, quote that they think fits the visuals.
We wanted to make the guests do something creative, different, out of the box, even challenging for them. They could then show their end result to others during the event and spark discussions while networking. In the end, we thought this is too boring, too business, too general. Not an experience. We wanted to do something different for the guests, truly show what a great experience is like.
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We came to the conclusion that gamification and challenge are the keywords for this, and came up with a structure for our experience.
The initial structure of the experience
The guests receive character cards and are to take the role of that character for the duration of the experience
The guests solve a given riddle to open a box. One is giving instructions, one is solving the riddle, perhaps eyes closed.
In the box there are instructions to build something from given items, such as lego 's. Perhaps the execution is done the same way as above?
After building, the guests create a story around their creation. They need to sell it without saying what it actually is.
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In the end, the guests receive a card which explains what they just experienced and what elements there were.
Next time we would continue with defining what is the theme and more detailed flow of the whole experience? Everyone would come up with ideas for the next meeting. We would also go to a storage space at school to see what decorations and items there were, which could help us come up with the theme and which we could use for staging the experience. Lastly, we needed to think about what the characters would be and what kind of riddles they would solve.
Developing the experience
Next time we met at Haaga-Helia campus and continued the ideation by drawing on the whiteboard painted walls. Few of the people could not make it today and we were not able to get to the storage space after all, so we continued with what we could.
Nataliia took the role of drawing and writing on the walls as she had a lot of ideas already, and together we built on these ideas. First we drew the experience journey steps discussed above and then began thinking about the theme for the experience. We came up with different ideas based on experience design: Progression of Economic Value including the cake example, Hero's Journey, Experience Realms, and Experience Pyramid. We decided to continue with Progression of Economic Value and Experience Realms, as they were originally presented and created by B. Joseph Pine IIand his co-author James H. Gilmore. Since Pine is the main speaker of the event, we wanted to honor this.
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Now that we had the themes for the experience, we gave the characters the roles based on them. We decided to focus on the cake example of the progression of economic value, and so the characters became Farmer, Manufacturer, Baker and Entertainment Center. Since there would be 10 participants, we would divide them into 5 pairs, and since there were only four categories, either Baker or the Entertainment Center would be done by two groups. These two would have the opportunity to get more diverse results from the participants even if done by multiple groups, compared to the other two.
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Next it was time to schedule the experience and ensure it fits the 30 minutes.
2 minutes safety time for guests to arrive
3-5 minutes to introduction of the experience (new)
3 minutes to divide the pairs and give them the character cards to read
2 minutes to solve the riddle and open the box
2 minutes to read and understand the building instructions
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5 minutes to build with the lego's found from the box
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3-5 minutes to create the story and pitch it to others
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2 minutes safety time for guests to leave
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3 minutes for resetting the experience for the next group
Schedule for the experience elements
At this point we realized, there would not be enough time for each group to come up with a story and pitch it to each other. We changed it so the guests would just place their creations on display and everyone would see each other's. We also specified in the introduction in the beginning, that we would explain to the guests the basic idea of progression of economic value so they would have an idea what the experience was about.
Next we went to get the lego's to help us generate ideas for the tasks and riddles. In the picture Valter and Nataliia are holding the green ingredients farmers could use in their creations to indicate their farmland and what they are growing.
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The riddles could be anything related to words, letters, scrabble, pictures, but since we did not know what kind of locks there were for us, we could not go more into detail yet. Since not everyone could make it this day, we decided not to go any further with the concept. We would first present our ideas to the others and see what they think.
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I wrote the ideation from the walls on paper in a more structured and clear way, so it would be easier for the others to understand. Brainstorming materials can be hard to read by others not present when making it.
I also listed some things we would need to think about and do next. In addition to the list below, we would need to get the lego's, get boxes with locks, get boxes for the display, and think about whether we want to use some decoration.
Plan the introduction speech
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Create the character cards
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Create the riddles
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Create the building instructions for lego's
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Create the memory cards given at the end
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Create name tags for the boxes and the display
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Design this all into a visually appealing form
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Print and laminate the cards
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Divide roles for the day of the event
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Divide roles for facilitating the experience
Things to think and do next
We met with the rest of the team on Zoom the next day to go through what we had come up with. Everyone liked our ideas and we continued with them. We came up with an idea to take pictures of the creations with a Polaroid camera, and give them to the guests at the end of the experience as memorabilia. For this we would need to bring multiple cameras and ensure we had enough film for each guest to get a picture.
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We also divided some responsibilities of who would prepare and what materials for the experience. The same person would take care of that part during the experience itself as well, as after doing the materials, they would know them the best.
Valter would plan the introduction speech
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Nataliia would create the character cards
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Riina would create the riddles
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Macarena would create the the building instructions for lego's
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Vanja would create the memory cards given at the end
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I would create name tags for the boxes and the display and design this all into a visually appealing form
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Violeta or us would print and laminate the cards
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Violeta would bring the legos, boxes, locks etc.
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Valter and Violeta would bring the polaroid cameras and the film, and Pipsa would bring a proper camera to photograph our event with
Responsibilities
We agreed everyone would deliver me the materials, so I could combine all the materials into a visually appealing form. We also agreed to meet up once more on few days later with the people creating the materials, to ensure they are cohesive and make adjustments if needed before I created the visuals.
Creating the materials
We met in Zoom on as agreed and went through the materials. Nat described the character card ideas and Macarena continued with the lego card ideas. We did a few adjustments to make them cohesive, one of these was Entertainment Center being changed into Entertainer, so the names would all be one word, and in the same kind of form, ending with -er. The others were also actual characters, but this one was a place.
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Vanja told us her idea for the memory card and we defined it a little further together. Riina told us her ideas for the riddles, but since we still did not know what kind of locks we had, it was a bit difficult to design them. We got an idea, that the riddles could be in the form of pictures, which needed to be put in the correct order, to form the solution to open the lock. We could add the numbers, letters or whichever to the images, once we knew what kind of locks we got. This way she could prepare everything else now.
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We combined all the materials into one file, so I could easily access them when making the visuals. Valter could not make it to this meeting but we shared this document to him and he added his part there. We considered meeting once more on Sunday morning before I started making the visuals, but came to the conclusion that everyone needs their free-time with loved ones as well. We would go through the materials on Monday before printing them.
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Originally I had thought about making the designs with Figma, but ended up doing them with Canva instead. This is because others had prepared their materials with Canva, and it has ready layouts and elements, which makes the work so much faster. It was a smart choice with a tight schedule like ours.
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The theme was built into a birthday party inspired by the cake example. The participants would help create a birthday party during the experience. So I looked for different kinds of birthday party themed styles for the cards, and chose the best one. I prepared the materials in the order of the experience, adding the materials others had prepared and made them visually appealing. In Nataliia's and Riina's visuals for character cards and riddles I adjusted the colors so they fit to the theme. The cards had been made easily replicable, only some words and sentences changed. With a short and tightly scheduled, fast paced experience, simplicity was the key.
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I had created my own version of the Experience Realms in my Thesis with Canva as well, so I took it and adjusted it to fit the style as well, and placed it on the memory card. Once I was done, I sent the link to others to let me know what they think. I was happy to hear everyone loved it and praised my work. Below you can see some of the cards.
Final preparations
We began the final preparation day by going through the materials and making final improvements before printing. We changed some words and sentences, combined the five pairs into four groups, so each economic category had one group and not two. Since not all of the guests were no longer pairs, we left out the one instructing and one solving blindfolded, so everyone could participate evenly in all groups. We also left out the Experience Realms from the theme and the memory card for clarity, and replaced my realms visuals with a picture of the cake example.
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Some of the team went to look for the boxes and locks so we could finalize the riddles. They found only one box and four glass jars, which were too small for the lego's. We changed the plan so that guests would solve the riddle, open the box or jar, get the lego instructions, after which they can access the whole pile of lego's, which would be in the middle of the table. This would also enable the guests more creativity as it would not be limited by which lego's they had. There were also no boxes for the display, so the creations would just be on the table.
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We chose different types of locks for variety: one with letters, one with directions, and two with numbers. We gave the directions lock for the farmers and decided that would be the one having three people instead of two, as it was more challenging than the others. Number locks we gave to Manufacturers and Bakers, and the letter number went for Entertainer. I added the correct cues for the images and Violeta went to print them for us.
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While waiting for the printed materials, I created an Excel sheet timetable for the day of the event, with the different roles and responsibilities during the day and the experience. Once we got the printed materials, we checked them once more.
It was also time to test our concept and we invited some students to help us. Three of us were available right away, and there was no time to prepare for the testing. I was chosen to be the one walking them through the experience, while others observed. I gave them the materials in the correct order, explaining to them what was happening. They got to try out the riddles and tell us the correct answer, but we did not lock the jars or anything. We would also not build anything with the lego's now, we just wanted to hear how they felt about the experience journey itself. We learned a lot from the testing, which is exactly why it is always done. Below you can find the key findings.
Key findings from testing the concept
Some of the materials were accidentally in the wrong order after printing, so the answers for the riddles were wrong too. I handed out the correct number of papers based on the order of the Canva file, but had not had time to check the printed materials before the students arrived and we began testing. Normally this kind of situation should not happen, as testing prototypes are better prepared for than we had the chance to.
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The riddle images need to be marked, so they are easily recognized to belong together. We decided to cut out the same corner of the paper per topic. This would also make it easier for us to rebuild the experience for the next group, when the correct cues were easy to identify.
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It was unclear for them, were the riddles done together or separately. They thought all the riddles form a journey together based on the progression of economic flow and form the solutions as well. We would explain this in the beginning, that they were done in your group.
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It would be good to introduce the lock types in the beginning as well, as not everyone has been for example to escape rooms and experienced anything like them. This way it would be easier to understand the idea of the direction lock for example.
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The number 0 I had put for the number locks was unclear for them. I did know it was different from the others, but not that it was not easy to see as 0. We changed the 0's into 4's, because there was no similar 0 to begin with as the others, and changing two numbers is faster than all of them.
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We noticed the introduction speech still said five pairs and not four groups, but it would not be read from the card anyway, it was only to help memorize it.
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The locked boxes and jars should be placed right in front of them from the beginning, for clarity. This would help to understand how things lead to another in a fast paced experience. Things are explained in the beginning but you often don't remember it all during the experience.
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It would be important to make the display a final climax of the experience, as it would wrap up the experience. Give a sense of accomplishment building the birthday party and summarize what the guests just went through.
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Last thing they mentioned was to always remember to tell the guests the time they have for each part of the experience and remind them when the time is ending.
The testing happened in Finnish as the students we got found it easier, so once they left I explained to the others what we learned and how it affected each of our roles and responsibilities. We made the final changes to the materials and Vanja and Valter went to print them with Violeta. Once we had the final materials printed and laminated, we cut the cards into the correct size. We began with scissors until we realized school has these huge cutters we can use. Riina and Macarena cut with two of those cutters and to help them, I cut with scissors as I have a very steady hand. I am used to cutting papers during menu changes in my restaurant industry years.
To make the room preparation easier in the morning of the event, we placed all the cards into their own envelopes and named them. We also put all the individual memory cards into their own envelopes, which would be handed to the guests at the end of the experience. Once we were done, we put all the materials into one big box easy for Violeta to take with her.
The event day
In the morning when we arrived, we got to hear some last minute changes. Only three of us would be facilitating the experience for the guests, others would have other responsibilities. The original dividing of roles now had to be divided between three people. This also meant we had to drop out taking the Polaroid pictures of the creations, as there were simply not enough people to make it fast enough. Nataliia, Valter and Vanja were the ones who would facilitate the experience.
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We prepared the room together as the whole team. At first we thought each group would have their own table, but we did not have four same size tables and could not get any more of them. So we went with what we had: three small ones, one big. We placed two small ones with one big one in the middle of the room and the pile of lego's in the middle of the table. We placed the lego instructions in the jars, locked them, and placed each a box or jar per side in the middle, and their cards in front of them to recognize which was for which character. The last small table was in the end of the room as the display table and we put up a bunch of lego people as well, ready for the birthday party.
My schedule for the day became to be that in the morning I would be welcoming the guests and guiding them to the right direction. During our experience in the morning and in the afternoon, I would be hosting Pine itself together with MTTC representative Joshua Moorrres. We all would participate in his workshops in the morning and afternoon, and each lunch and breakfast together. There would also be some time to network and just be between the program sections and after it.
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As I did not facilitate the experience myself, I asked Nataliia to write to me how it all went, what kind of changes they had to improvise, what the guests thought about the experience and so forth. The following information is from her.
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As the guests arrived, Nataliia divided them individually and in random order to the different sides of the tables, until each side had at least one person. The introduction speech and instructions took about 1-1.5 minutes instead of the planned 3. The guests were solving the riddle for around 2-3 minutes, and some groups got help opening the locks, such as the direction lock which can be difficult. The groups continued to build the lego's in their own pace, so there were no breaks in between the different sections if some were faster than the others. They ended up giving up to 10 minutes to build with the lego's, as the other sections took less time, but not all groups used this whole time. In the end the guests took their creations to the displays and presented them, which took about 1-2 minutes. Final words and giving the memory cards took the estimated 2 minutes.
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Most of the groups were left 5-10 minutes extra after the experience. The planned 20-25 plus the additional safety times in the beginning and end, got shorter in the execution. Reasons behind this could be that our simple tasks were even too simple after all, while we were trying to consider the context and that guests may have no experience of anything like it before. With more time to prototype and test our concept, we would have been more correct with our planned schedule, but with a tight schedule like this, it is understandable. 30 minutes for an experience is a really short time, but also taught us, it can be easy to overestimate the time things take. Rather this way, than the other. Based on this, there would have been time to take the Polaroid pictured after all, but they did not go for it anymore.
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The main thing is that the guests really enjoyed our experience and had fun. We got a lot of positive feedback from it, saw lots of smiles and heard happy laughter. It was a success! Below is a picture of our whole team with B. Joseph Pine II, around our experience set up.
Team references
Had a great pleasure to work with (and under helpful supervision of) Minka for the MTTC's "Time well spent". I was part of the student team taking care of designing and creating an Edutainment (Educational and Entertaining) activity experience, which Minka was overseeing. She had the helpful encouragement of a great team leader, would always give full creative freedom to anyone who was sharing ideas, and was able to efficiently summarize the said ideas so as to communicate them to others and those on the MTTC's management team. She was very trusting in us as a team an that translated very well on the very day of the event and our Edutainment activity.
Attendees had a fun and entertaining activity that aided them in familiarising themselves with the main topic of the events, that was the workshop by Joe Pine II about the "Experience Economy". Hence, cannot recommend her enough to be a leader of a design team or project, as she will make sure to lead it to a great success!
Nataliia Chernova, BASc Hospitality Management, Haaga Helia UAS
I have worked with Minka as our team leader in an international B2B gamified event in Hyvinkää, Finland. Minka is very communicative, active, and easy to work with. Even during the toughest moments, she shows great emotional intelligence skills. Her energy is contagious and she can transform a moment into a pleasant memory. As per my experience, I strongly recommend her for project manager positions.
Valter Biscaia da Silva Filho, BASc Hospitality Management, Haaga Helia UAS
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