Understanding the Problem 

The challenge started with the following briefing:

The Briefing

Hello Designer, are you ready to revolutionize education? Congratulations on joining our team. It's an honor to have you here, and we count on you for this mission! High expectations have been set.

You know that distance learning can be challenging. Many people struggle to establish a study routine and can't sustain motivation for long periods.

That's why we're creating an educational platform that doesn't leave the responsibility of self-motivation solely in the hands of professionals.

Every significant step the collaborator takes will be rewarded with points that can be converted into money. Additionally, these points will serve as measurements of performance evaluation and metrics to determine future promotions.

It's important to note that we should exercise discernment and not award points for each and every action.

Actions that bring the collaborator closer to their ultimate goal of investing their time and energy in professional development should be recognized and rewarded. Simple day-to-day actions should be less valued, but we must still show the collaborator the importance of compound effort to progress.

Our platform currently includes:

  • List of video lessons

  • List of text lessons

  • Challenges

  • Space for comments

  • Forum for questions, daily discussions, live event announcements, and sharing of internal projects and volunteering opportunities.

The main questions we have today to implement the entire gamification dynamics are:

  • What other didactic mechanisms can we create to engage collaborators?

  • What actions should be considered as relevant and grant points in the study journey? How many points should each different kind of action award?

  • What actions are considered important to managers and the company that we need to encourage collaborators to execute?

  • How to help collaborators understand the importance of points and the impact it can have on their education and career - beyond the reward of exchanging points for prizes/money?

  • What gamification mechanisms can we use to translate effort and results into scores such as Points, Badges, Rewards, Ranking, Progress Bars, Multiplicative Factors, Intermediate Goals, etc.?

  • What biases such as the sunk cost bias, loss of progress, and FOMO can we apply to prevent less motivated individuals from giving up on completing the courses?

  • We are sure that besides these questions, you will have many others to create a proposal for what would be the best online study platform.

You have a free pass to contact people who study online and understand more about their experience - what frustrates them, what motivates them, what can be improved.

Your goal is to prototype an educational platform implementing tools and mechanisms that motivate employees on their study journey.

It's time! Get to work.

Considering the briefing, our primary challenges were:

  1. Analyzing the current scenario and operational tasks of corporate training courses to discern the strengths and weaknesses of the existing model from both user and company perspectives.

  2. Creating a solution that enhances employee engagement and motivation in the process of professional development.

  3. Establishing a collaborative environment through the integration of gamification principles.

To delve deeper into the problem context, we proceeded with the application of the 5W2H Method.

5W2H Method

With the aid of this information, we formulated a hypothesis for the problem statement: How can we promote user engagement and motivate these professionals to complete the training courses?

The purpose of the statement was to immerse ourselves in the user's perspective, gain a profound understanding of the problem, and articulate the issues that the solution must address.

Context: Currently, companies strive for engagement in training courses and active participation in company processes. Challenges include low employee adherence and a lack of involvement in choosing company-proposed courses and activities, leading to dropouts and delays in course completion.

This causes problems for: Employees, managers, and clients (indirectly).

Why: Because the employee cannot establish a study routine or cannot prioritize the course due to work commitments. It affects the employee because:

  • The company often struggles to precisely assess the significance and value of imparting knowledge to its employees.

  • Employees are not engaged.

  • High cost for the company and concerns regarding course relevance.

This is important because:

  • Employees may become more engaged.

  • The company will be more likely to retain the employee to better serve its clients.

  • Employees may gain more autonomy and decision-making power in company processes.

  • Reduction of errors.

  • Increased leadership engagement.

  • Alignment of processes and objectives.

  • Evaluation of employee performance.

  • Assists in outlining a career plan.

  • May provide important and concrete metrics for future promotions.

  • Individualized evaluation metric based on challenges and results measurements.

  • Motivates people to be part of something bigger.

  • Motivates people to acquire and renew knowledge.