Making Productivity Playful
Timeline:
2020-2022
Hats Worn:
UX Design
UX Research
Strategy Design
Team:
1 Lead Designer
2 Visual Designers
1 Product Owner
4 Developers
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Note: Some details have been adapted to respect confidentiality, but the case study reflects the real work and impact.
TL;DR / Quick summary
Proact launched strong, but engagement soon began to slip. To turn things around, I proposed a bold idea: make it feel like a game. I designed and rolled out a gamification strategy with points, badges, leaderboards, and events that kept people coming back. Engagement rose by 60%, retention by 50%, and contribution shifted from admin to achievement.
What started as a risky pitch became the engine that kept Proact alive.
Missing something? Read the Proact case study
When Proact first rolled out, everything looked promising. People were curious. They logged in, explored the features, and even started posting and contributing. For a platform designed to cut through scattered resources and bring teams together, it felt like proof we were on the right track.
But a few months later, the energy began to fade. Engagement numbers told the story week after week. Fewer logins. Fewer contributions. Conversations that had started lively began to flatten out. Proact still had value. The feedback we gathered showed that people liked what it offered. They just weren’t coming back often enough.
The real issue wasn’t adoption. It was retention. People joined, but they didn’t stick. And in a system built on collective input, that was dangerous.
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Proact only worked if the community kept feeding it.
Without a steady flow of new posts, updates and interactions, the whole thing risked going quiet.
That was the backdrop when I put gamification on the table. Some saw it as a gimmick. For me, it was a way of answering the real question:
how do you make contribution feel less like a chore and more like something people want to do?
The Problem
The data told a clear story. People weren’t coming back.
When I dug deeper, a pattern emerged. The platform worked best when people contributed regularly, but contribution felt like extra admin. Once users had uploaded their initial resources, the habit didn’t stick. There was no sense of progress, no reason to return, no visible recognition for the effort.
The challenge wasn’t about fixing a broken feature. It was about motivation.
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How do you get people to come back to the same platform again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to?
If the problem was motivation, the solution could not be another feature tucked away in the platform. What we needed was a system that made people want to return, not out of obligation, but because it felt rewarding.
That is when I started looking outside of work tools for inspiration. The research had already shown me that many of our users were gamers. They understood progression, streaks, achievements, and recognition. These were behaviours they engaged in every day outside of work. So I asked myself:
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“What if we took that language of play and brought it into Proact?”
That is where the strategy began. I mapped out a system built on three core mechanics:
Points for every action such as posting, sharing, endorsing, linking resources. A simple feedback loop that rewarded people instantly.
Badges as milestones, creating a sense of progression. They gave people visible recognition and nudges like “So close to your next badge.”
Leaderboards to make progress social. Seeing your name climb compared to peers created energy and, yes, a little bit of competition.
When I first laid this out, the reaction was mixed. Some stakeholders thought it was clever, others thought it was childish. A few openly questioned whether consultants would really “play” at work. To them, badges and points belonged in video games, not inside Deloitte.
But I held my ground. I pointed to the data showing clear dips in engagement after the initial launch. I reminded them of the research that showed many of our users were gamers in their personal lives. They already thrived on streaks, achievements, and visible progress.
I also supplemented this with external data. Studies consistently showed that gamification increased engagement and retention by creating cycles of motivation and reward. Platforms that applied these mechanics successfully saw participation rise and behaviours stick over time.
This strategy was about tapping into behaviours people already understood and enjoyed, and reframing contribution so it felt valuable instead of like admin.
I created Open events that would boost overall engagement, and Restricted events that could be used to target specific user groups
Once the core mechanics were in place, I built on top of them with events. Some were open to everyone. Others were restricted to specific groups. Together they turned these mechanics into collective bursts of energy that kept the platform alive.
The Events Strategy
Events were the centrepiece of the gamification plan. The points, badges, and leaderboards set the foundation, but events were what made the system come alive. They created rhythm, gave people a reason to return at specific moments, and turned contribution into something that felt shared rather than isolated.
I designed them to run in cycles, each with its own theme and mechanics. Some were large, open events that brought everyone together. Others were targeted and restricted, aimed at re-energising specific groups whose activity had started to fade. Together, they kept momentum moving across the platform and ensured no one group was left behind.
Open Events
Open events were the showpieces. They were designed for everyone, loud and visible, the kind of challenges that made people talk in team channels and compare progress in hallways.
The very first event had to set the tone. I treated it like a product launch:
teaser banners the week before,
leadership emails endorsing it, and
a homepage takeover on kickoff day.
When you logged in, the platform greeted you with a countdown timer and one giant call-to-action: Join the Event.
Strategy for the first event
The mechanics were deliberately simple. Every action you took earned points. View a resource. Endorse one with a comment. Link it to a project. Post something new. Each action ticked your progress bar forward. Cross certain thresholds and you unlocked badges with names that sounded more like achievements than chores: “Scout” “Contributor” “Collaborator”
To keep it fresh, each open event had its own flavour.
One was a Points Race where the goal was to hit 1,000 points in the shortest time.
Another was a Badge Blitz, where the challenge was to complete entire sets of badges before the timer ran out.
Then came the Legend Challenge, a multi-week climb where each tier unlocked a new level of activity, starting with discovery and ending with full-blown collaboration on a project.
The goal was always the same: make contribution feel like progress. Every action had a payoff. Every event had a story arc, from the teaser to the mid-event leaderboard update to the last 48 hours where nudges told you exactly how close you were to the next badge or the studio podium.
Ideas for the Open events
Restricted Events
Restricted events were more surgical. They targeted specific groups when their energy flagged.
For managers and leadership, I created Success Stories, a challenge where they had to post one story about a team win using a simple template: the problem, the approach, the resources used, the impact. They also had Rewarding Spree, which pushed them to issue endorsements that carried real weight in the system.
Ideas for the Managers and Leadership user group
For SMEs, there was Resource Refresh, which focused on updating stale assets and attaching ownership details.
Practitioners got Linking Mania, nudging them to tie existing resources to live projects.
These events were shorter and sharper, usually a week long. They were framed as role-specific missions rather than generic tasks. The idea was to make each group feel like the platform was speaking directly to them.
How It All Came Together
Events followed a rhythm -
→ A teaser five days before,
→ a warm-up nudge two days before,
→ a homepage takeover at kickoff,
→ a leaderboard update at the halfway mark,
→ a burst of reminders in the final 48 hours, and finally,
→ a wrap-up with highlights, winners, and a digest of the most valuable contributions that came out of the event.
The communications mattered as much as the mechanics. The copy was short, punchy, almost cheeky.
“You’re one action away from unlocking your next badge.”
“Twelve people in your studio have already finished. Don’t let them get too far ahead!”
Instead of corporate announcements, they read like game updates, written to spark FOMO and momentum.
I also created an exhaustive list of tasks, points and nudges for easy scalability
The difference was immediate - events gave Proact a heartbeat. People stopped seeing contribution as admin and started seeing it as a chance to level up, compete, or be recognised. It was playful, but it was also serious, because every action they took meant better resources, better visibility, and better collaboration for the whole community.
Turning the strategy into reality meant making gamification feel seamless inside a corporate platform. I started with design. Wireframes showed how badges, leaderboards, and event progress would surface directly in the product. Badges appeared as progress rings with playful nudges like “One action left to unlock.” Leaderboards were split by global, studio, and team views so competition felt fair, and users who preferred privacy could opt out.
Marketing mattered as much as mechanics. Each event had its own identity with visuals, banners, and short, energetic copy. Every launch was endorsed by leaders, which gave the whole thing credibility. What could have felt like a side experiment instead felt like something woven into the culture.
For participants, the experience was designed to feel simple and rewarding from the first click. Logging in during an event meant being greeted with a clear card showing the title, the time left, and one obvious call to action. Each contribution moved a progress bar forward. Badges lit up when milestones were hit. Leaderboards updated in real time to show progress alongside peers. Nudges appeared at just the right moment, reminding people they were close to unlocking the next badge or climbing to the next tier.
Our wireframes for the events, promoting competition and engagement
The finish line mattered as much as the start. At the end of each event, we showed not just who topped the leaderboard but also which contributions had the most impact. Many participants told me that having a resource featured or endorsed by leadership meant more than the badge itself. Recognition was the real motivator.
Making progress tracking easier even after the event has ended
Behind the scenes, we kept the system honest. Daily caps prevented spam. Points were weighted toward meaningful contributions like linking or adding context. Dashboards tracked participation, actions per user, and retention at the cohort level. After each event, we looked at the numbers and the feedback. If engagement dipped, we adjusted the rewards or nudges. If something hit harder than expected, we carried it forward.
Looking back, execution was as much about trust as it was about mechanics. I had to make sure the system felt fun without ever feeling like a gimmick, and fair without being heavy-handed. Each cycle taught us more about what motivated people, and over time the events became something users anticipated instead of ignored. That was the real sign it was working.
The impact showed up fast. Within the first cycle of events, daily active users jumped noticeably. By the end of the quarter, overall engagement had risen by more than 60%. Retention improved by 50% compared to pre-gamification levels. That meant people weren’t just logging in once and disappearing. They were returning, contributing, and building habits.
The behaviours themselves told an even more interesting story.
Linking resources to projects increased by nearly a third. That single behaviour was critical because it turned Proact from a static repository into a connected network.
Endorsements doubled during open events, which meant resources gained more context and credibility.
The number of practitioners completing multiple contributions in a single session climbed steadily, showing that the progress loop was working.
The quotes we gathered backed up the numbers. Practitioners said the badges made them want to “see how far they could go.” Some admitted they kept checking back just to watch their place on the leaderboard. Others said recognition mattered more than winning:
“I didn’t care about the top spot, but it felt good to see my work noticed.”
For me, the most important shift was cultural. Proact stopped feeling like a place you had to go and started feeling like a place people wanted to check in on. Open events created a buzz across studios and got people talking. Restricted events gave groups that had gone quiet the nudge they needed. The rhythm of progress, recognition, and reward made contribution part of the everyday flow.
The data proved the mechanics worked. The stories showed that people actually felt it. And together they turned a risky idea into one of the most powerful drivers of Proact’s success.
Reflections
I still remember the look on people’s faces when I said, “Let’s make Proact more like Fortnite.” At the time it sounded reckless. A few even laughed. But what started as a wild pitch ended up becoming one of the most impactful strategies I’ve ever delivered.
If you had told me then that badges, points, and leaderboards would become the lifeline of a corporate platform, I probably would have laughed too. Yet that is exactly what happened. Gamification didn’t just boost numbers. It changed how people felt about contributing.
The biggest lesson for me was that usability alone is never enough. A system can be perfectly functional and still fail if people have no reason to return. Motivation is the real engine. Progress bars, streaks, and recognition worked because they tapped into behaviours that people already understood in their lives outside of work. By bringing those behaviours into Proact, contribution started to feel natural and rewarding.
I also saw how much culture shapes design. Mechanics on their own could have been dismissed as gimmicks. With leaders endorsing events and recognising contributions, they became part of the organisation’s rhythm. That legitimacy turned play into momentum.
This project reminded me that design is about more than solving problems. It is about sparking behaviour, creating energy, and shifting how people see their work. Proact’s gamification strategy did that. It turned contribution from admin into achievement, and in doing so, it gave the platform a pulse that kept it alive.
