UX/UI Case explained
For the product designed from scratch and used by Deutche Telecom.
UX CHALLENGES
The gamification strategy was the first major UX hurdle since I needed to fully map out the digital experience of both employees / management in order to determine what would be the best way for
The second major UX challenge was ensuring a simple and usable experience on every screen on the mobile part of the app for the employees, specifically for the Deutsche Telecom employees.
The third most important UX challenge was to be able to create easy and fast admin panel experience for the management team, so they could effortless use it, without any interruptions of normal working processes.
The overall UX challenge is to be able to create win-win strategy for employees and management team. Employees to be motivated to play, the more quizzes played the better, and management team to get as much as possible data regarding their employees, and the more valuable and meaningful data, the better
UX SOLUTIONS
To solve our UX challenges, we created a system with two major components:
To help the employee always go forward through the quizzes, we created smart gamification UX strategy using goal-oriented principle of user experience, which means user is always organically motivated to do next step, no matter, how small that step is, fast, easy and immediately.
To be able to do all that, we made 3 different version of the public app, each one after another, in the period of 2 years. From this perspective, It seems long, but that's time including the design and development of each version.
In this UX/UI solution explanations, I'll go directly to the end version, third one. And, at later point will shortly describe the first two.
FINAL SCREENS EXPLANATION
If we analyse the screens, we'll notice that first part of them is just introduction what this quiz-based gamification platform is about, with presenting most important screens (leader-board and playing quiz), so employees will get feeling what this project is about - leader-board, meaning there is some competition here, and quiz, meaning you need just to tap some answers on very playful way.
GAMIFICATION
For highlight the gamification part, we were using most important ingredients of gamification process - levels, points, rewards and quests.
LEVELS
By playing quizzes, employee is always motivate to earn points (points here are called blixes), so he can beat his opponent (which is very important, to win, not to lose, it's personal). All points earn through every quiz is calculated in total points. To be able not to lose interest in the game when there are a lot of points, we created LEVELS, each level depended on total points earned so far by the user.
EXPONENTIAL ALGORITHM FOR ADVANCE TO THE NEXT LEVEL
So, as on every game, user starts with Level 1 and go upper, but not linear. Which means, user can easy come to level 5, 6 or 10, but at some later stages, it's difficult to advance. For achieving this, we were using this formula for calculating level depending of points earned:
QUESTS
Very important part of the gamification process is QUEST - different and creative task. For example,
Those part are crucial, cause they give different feeling and excitement through the overall gaming experience.
REWARDS
Rewards, from the other side, no mater how small or big they are, can't be forgotten. When system is offering to the employee free paid travel to some attractive location for achieving some biggest task, or even free launch or coffee, for small achievement, that's when you have everything at one place. Rewards can be depending of some normal duel wins, or for finishing some quests, or level progression etc.
Creativity comes here, to be able to find out interesting quests and rewards
BUDDIES
To be able to handle both big or small companies, or big or small departments, we even included adding BUDDIES, which means users can create their own type of league or rankings.
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CONCLUSION
ORGANIC GAMIFICATION PROCESS ACHEIEVED
Users are organically motivated to play quizzes, they have feeling where they are in terms of rankings, they have different tasks (quests) and real rewards for achieving something. And, all that easy for them, and playful.
LEARNING PROCESS ON PLAYFUL WAY, INSTEAD BIG AND BORING PDF DOCS
On the other side, while playing, users (employers) are learning, actually. On every question, they have info if that's right or wrong. Instead of some big and boring PDF documents with some instruction or rules for company directions, which usually employees in big companies are spiking and can easy lie they have read it and learned it, this quiz-based user experience motivate employees to learn just by playing. They even don't know they are learning, it's not their point of interest. It's sounds harsh, but it's fact. People would like to compete, to have challenge, to earn some reward... Not all of them want just to learn.
REPORTS FOR MANAGEMENT TEAM
The other important UI challenge of the system was, how we prepared reports for the management team, so data they see, is really meaningful. Example of this could be
Employee X is best at marketing, or
PROBLEM SOLVED
It's like win-win combination. Employees are learning, and by playing quizzes, management team has gotten important data on level of knowledge of their employees.
MY ROLE
My role here, was to completely guide the process, to design everything, to make everything from idea into real digital product.
It all started when watching soccer game from World Cup 2014, with a guy working in Deutsche Telecom, in Communication Department, when I show him previous gamification app I/ve made - fantasy game for sport, and when he just show similar game that employees from Telecom have already and use - to compete on games on World Cup.
It ended being able to see big company like Deutsche Telecom, on big stage, with more than 300 employees, use our product, and actually have competition, with some well rewards like iPad's etc. As for any creator, aside the business part, when you see your product being used by real users, it's like musician just getting his applause on big stage.
THE PROCESS OF ACHIEVING ALL THIS
As described the final version, the process, wasn't that easy and smooth.
First, me personally, I have never working in such big company like Deutsche Telecom, and don't know personally, how Germans are, especially those that are going to use the app.
TYPICAL PERSONA RESEARCH
To be able to do that, research of the typical persona was probably most important part at the beginning. Will not go into details here, just mentioning that I just needed do put myself into that end user, German guy, working in Deutsche Telecom. And, in parallel, the same with the people from the management team. Since the region I am coming from, the temperament of the people, their working habits is pretty different from those managers from Deutsche Telecom, another big persona research needed for having good starting point.
To be able to make as great as possible persona research, I did some important step forward this - went to Germany, hang out with those guys, invite some of them at our country, so we have not just official talks about doing the research part, but being able to closely see how they behave, what's their field of interest, what motivates them, what is boring for them, what excited them, what's the thing that makes them feel good. This approach takes a lot of time and effort, but it's critical. It's crazy how through non-formal conversation, your brain is prepared with information, and when you need to do sketching, or mock-up or even graphic design part, you create different solution.
When designing different personas, not just for the public part of the game, but for the system overall, we created those type of users of the system:
For each of them I created use-cases, real scenarios that they are going to do while using the system. And, most important, something what many UX designers are missing, finding out what's the most important scenario, what are the most repetitive etc. so the UI part is designed the way user through the system is going easy fast, without excise processes.
When all those use-cases were done, first sketches were made. And, with sketches made, put them all on one big table, and start testing all the use-cases. While testing, I was able to find what's the weak point of some scenario, or when some process is long, or takes a lot of steps, or steps (or clicks or using actions) that could be skipped. With few iterations, I resigned the sketches. When testing the use-cases like this, almost every screen has some point of improvement.
Important, when there is some conflict of interest for two difficult scenario on single screen, the decision point is very easy - what is more important use-case, that one takes advantage.
So, after the sketches are done, I started with wire frames, then mock-ups and finally the prototypes. Inside this process, we were doing few iterations, with the core team of the project, so we discuss details and do some refinements.
That's how we manage to have the first version. And have final graphic for it, and develop iOS app for that. By doing this, we got some very interesting ideas how quiz process will look alike, and instead of classic question quiz and one topic, linear from question 1 to question , we created some very interesting concept, which means, quiz process is like this. Instead of real-time quiz duel competition, we created interactive and time not that depended, so user can play quiz at some later point (that's how we manage to handle the part when 2 employees don't have interruption of their regular working tasks)
QUIZ GAME FLOW REDEFINED
Quiz game (duel) is consistent of 3 rounds. Winner is not the one who earns more points, but one who will first win two rounds. Similar like tennis game. Each round is consisted of 5 questions, same for each user.
This way, with this type of game, which is very interactive, employees has more interesting type of competition. In case they play 3 rounds they even play 15 questions. And they can do it whenever they want. So, they are not depended so each of them is free at the moment.
Another benefit, this way of game allows users to have different open games at certain point.
SECOND VERSION
After have the first version, and send this iOS app to real users, for BETA testing, we got some very valuable insights about what they like and don't like. What is non-important and what is missing. That was already starting the second version, and whole process, from defining personas, started over. Repeating every step of the process, we managed to have the second version, only the graphic design of it (without development), and send again to real end users from Deutsche Telecom, so they can imagine play the quizzes.