In early 2018, MLT started offering a brand-new service to its customers: Video Animation. This service was new not only for our client but also in house. We needed to gather the skills required to accommodate these new requests and learn from the bumps along the way.
At the completion of our first video, we used our experience to inform the expectation for future projects. Initially, we were two designers that worked and managed everything from beginning to end. What we did not anticipate, was additional team members being involved in future projects. We found ourselves in a situation where there were too many cooks in the kitchen. Everyone was doing their best to contribute but the new “cooks” did not know when to preheat the oven or put in specific ingredients.
We knew that more of these requests were coming and if we were to continue working with many other resources, we needed new team members to quickly understand the video making process so that they could jump in and productively contribute.
Gamifying the process
As we sat down an began to talk about the process, we realised that there were 2 type of decisions:
Decisions that would move the project forward
Decisions that would cause major setbacks
In simultaneous stroke of genius, both of us (designers) realised that our process is very similar to a game of Snakes & Ladders. Therefore, we designed a board game.
As you move through the game it is easy to see what pushes the players forward, where money can be saved and what causes major setbacks. What we did not expect was how our game would also streamline communication. Immediately after releasing our game we had co-workers sending emails saying how they would be able to help with specific “squares” in the game. We made it easy for our team members to identify their tasks by number and visualise the sequential order of tasks within the project timeline.
Gamifying our process has helped the team understand the impact of specific decisions during the video animation process and has greatly helped us communicate. We highly encourage doing an exercise in Gamifying a work process to not only accomplish what we have but also gain a better understanding of you own processes. We used snakes and ladders, but you may find your process is better suited to Trouble or Catan.
We hope this idea will help you optimize your team and better serve your clients.
Authors:
Nicole Hutchison, Marketing Coordinator Missing Link Technologies
Josée Leger, Graphic Designer Missing Link Technologies
Gamifying, Process, Design, Project Management, Teamwork, Boardgame