Motu Ta’e’iloa (Our Special Island)

Client
Millipede / Second Muse / Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Encouraging healthy eating in the South Pacific

The brief

Like many large organisations, KPMG’s size and complex range of capabilities mean employees are often not aware of the products and services offered by other departments, and this can hold back the business. But employees often don’t rate optional training packages a high priority in a busy workplace.

To address this, Millipede developed The Games, an online gamified learning experience that utilises the natural competitiveness of KPMG staff to convey information about the wider organisation.

The result

Millipede took a familiar quiz format and built it into an exciting, animated sports-themed experience. Staff members proceed through levels of increasingly detailed content, pitting their corporate knowledge against colleagues and winning prizes, from outlandish outfits for their onscreen characters to real-world rewards. A live tournament module uses the same game engine to set up group tournaments for internal special events.

Built-in system reporting allows the KPMG project team to monitor participation and measure the effect on employee knowledge and understanding. Following the initial pilot, KPMG reported a 21% improvement in awareness of the firm’s service capabilities in their Competing for Engagement white paper.

Gamified learning

The Games aims to break down knowledge silos in a large organisation, harnessing the team’s natural competitiveness to foster learning, cross-silo co-operation and a sense of shared purpose.

Each quiz shows animated characters competing in familiar competitive sports such as running, swimming, hurdles and archery. Quizzes consist of question sets from all service offerings, ensuring every player sees a mix of familiar and unfamiliar content, and questions increase in difficulty as play continues.

The quiz format uses a sophisticated algorithm that combines the accuracy of the player’s answer with the speed of their response, to propel their avatar across the screen in competition with the other characters. Combining difficulty levels, rewards and competition is a compelling way to keep learners engaged, and returning for more.

Avatar and unlocks

Central to the gamified experience is a customisable avatar system. Players choose key aspects of their avatar appearance, and with continued play they unlock increasingly outlandish clothes and accessories to ‘improve’ their character.

Iterative testing, guided by Millipede’s gamification experience, was used to map out and optimise the set of unlockable content across the expected learning trajectory of players, creating a smooth, compelling arc of rewards and fun as players continue through the content.

Tournaments

It’s not easy to get people excited about in-house, optional training. To provide an extra level of interest and excitement, The Games includes a live tournament feature. For special events, a KPMG tournament host can run a live action tournament. Players gather in teams to enter the tournament on a shared device, with a live leaderboard projected in the front of the room. The tournament host initiates questions that display simultaneously on each team’s computer. The leaderboard updates in realtime as each group enters their answer.

Millipede implemented the tournament mode in a way that hid the technical details, allowing a tournament to be set up and run quickly and without hassle. Tournaments have proved to be a very popular team exercise that really brings out the natural competitiveness of the team in a fun, social setting. These events have been such a draw that KPMG plans to build more live tournament features into future learning tools.

CMS (Content Management System) for question sets

KPMG required a convenient path to prepare and upload quiz content as required. As part of project development, Millipede created a simple Excel spreadsheet and content guidelines, to allow the KPMG project team to easily write and edit quiz content across the difficulty levels.

Reporting and systems integration

KPMG maintains the highest standards of security and confidentiality, so deploying a new tool into their environment required a full security and verification process. We built The Games to align with all KPMG security, access control, data retention and privacy controls. The Games also integrates with KPMG’s existing user management tools, synchronising with KPMG user lists to verify and restrict access.

Reporting is implemented within the tool at both individual and summarised levels, showing participation and score. The key learning outcome (improving company knowledge) is tracked directly, showing where information that was previously unknown was retained and learned over time. This tracking and reporting has enabled KPMG to report on the success of the tool to internal stakeholders and to the wider public.

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