HP Amazing Race | Leveling Up Sales
Overview
Turning facts into fun by transforming HP’s virtual sales training into a gamer’s paradise. HP needed a way to keep gamers engaged during a 3 day virtual seminar. What followed was a decidedly old school approach with a virtual twist. Developed in Unity, we designed and developed a gamified experience that seamlessly integrated with HP’s online training platform and featured 4 interactive modules based on casual classics to test trainees’ knowledge. With custom content, addictive gameplay, leaderboards and more, users got to channel their inner-child while getting the job done.
Role: Experience Design Director
What I Did
Research and concepting
Game Design
Creative Direction
UX Design
Why It Mattered
This project was about connecting the dots. There was no blueprint, and no way to interview users on how they would feel about online training for 72 hours. Everything happened fast and I drew heavily on my games industry background and knowledge. It required rapid iteration, intense collaboration, and a lot of creative workarounds. We were the right team for the job.
Approach
For the experience to succeed it would have to spur engagement and healthy competition among salespeople. The games needed to be fun but educational. Challenging, but with a low learning curve, all while featuring HP content. No easy feat, but with my years learning from legendary game designers and complemented by a team of hardcore gamers our research and ideation consisted mostly of play sessions and comparing notes on some of our favorite casual games.
We landed on 4 different games based on popular play styles such as crossword puzzles, match 3 games, and even a take on old school Mad Libs. All 4 games were developed in Unity and were then skinned with custom content to be able to provide up to 15 unique versions of the games during the course of the conference. The experience also aggregated cumulative scores for leaderboards to add extra incentive for players. Development and user testing happened under tight timelines and required us to get creative on the fly when players ran into roadblocks.
