Level Up Your Testing and Training with Gamification: Acquire Enhanced Insights and Outcomes
- Richard Green
- Apr 29, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 30, 2024
Imagine simulating all of the risk of project execution in a game of "Monopoly", or experiencing the rapid highs and lows of a commercial negotiation in a game of "Snakes and Ladders"? Show your stakeholders their are no limits to your innovation by using analogue board games to test digital products!
Gamification can increase testing accuracy, enhance user perception, provide early identification of adoption challenges and amazing insights about intuitiveness and usability of your product!
Scripted Behaviours lead only to Predictable Outcomes
Just relying on test scripts and training manuals can feel fake to users. These guides might show them how to use something step-by-step, but they don't let users explore on their own. This can make users feel like the instructions don't consider their needs.
While these scripts are great for catching bugs in your testing environments, they won't tell you everything about how real users will interact with your application. Before you release it to a wider audience, getting feedback from a small group is your last chance to truly understand how usable and useful it is.
Roll the Dice, Make it Fun
Adopting a more sympathetic approach using gamification not only makes testing more fun, but also more realistic! Encourage users to behave instinctively, under pressure, and self-navigate all of the ambiguity they navigate in real-life.
Here's the double win: being transparent and authentic builds trust with your users. They'll see you understand their daily struggles and are willing to learn from mistakes to improve their experience. Plus, dice rolling uncovers unexpected issues scripted tests miss, preventing launch-day chaos and saving you both the stress of scrambling to fix things on the fly. This smooth launch leads to happier users and better adoption of your product.
Observing the users as they feel their way through this free-work also surfaces pain points that you may not be able to design out of the process / application. But this early identification affords you the luxury of being able to lean into these points of friction and draw particular focus to them in your transformation / change management journey.
"Monopoly" Framework Example:
In this example, I used the Monopoly framework to simulate the process and jeopardy of project delivery. Monopoly is a universally recognised board game familiar to global users. Adapting the gameplay to include all of the tasks that needed to be performed during the lifecycle of a project meant that that every task was performed in a random order, and the users were forced to continually navigate to different functions using non-standard paths. Jeopardy was introduced using Chance cards i.e. the user may have a lost time accident that cost them money because they could not work, or rework as a consequence of poor quality that incurred a cost, or maybe they secured some extra work that led to a bonus?
What did Users Say?
"A really fun and novel way of testing, more realistic"
"A lot more fun than scripts"
"A great way to guarantee random, erratic testing"
"The competition between colleagues puts players under pressure to perform tasks, just like in real-life"
"The randomness helps to drive out the issues"
"When given limited instruction, you have to find your own way and you quickly find how intuitive the application is"
"A great icebreaker to play with work colleagues. It's very sociable and you have to collaborate to learn"
"A great way to learn when used as a training tool"
Considerations: Collaboration, Culture, and Inclusivity
Here are some thoughts to help you consider the needs of your target audience:
Make sure you walk in your users shoes before attempting to recreate their environment. This will ensure an authentic experience.
Use real data sets to identify scenarios from real projects i.e. EHS records, NCRs, Project Performance reports are great sources for populating Chance and Chest cards.
Consider the cultural awareness / appropriateness of the game you select. Will all your users recognise / understand the rules of the game before they start?
Don't dismiss testing as an IT problem. The successful launch of a product is a team effort. But do work with you partners to ensure the synthesised testing meets all of their needs also.
Be mindful that any adaptation of a game is inclusive and sensitive to the diverse needs of your target focus group.
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