OBJECTIVE
To create an immersive empathic experience for stakeholders to ‘walk in the shoes’ of our identified personas, and to demonstrate various working practices within the uk economy and how these affect everyday life.
OUTCOME
The game changed the outlook of many key stakeholders, and was instrumental in diverting the policy objectives towards a flexible approach that encompassed a wider baseline of considerations than originally defined, whilst retaining policy intent.
METHOD
A long term project into new ways of working in the UK economy had run over 3 years, resulting in a huge amount of research output and core findings affecting the user groups.
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I designed a dice-based board game, where players played as one of the 3 core personas. As they progress around the board, they might land on an opportunity to work and earn money. They might land on everyday life events (such as car breakdowns, holidays, bills, and trips to the hospital), that could cost them money, or they might land on an embedded piece of user research insight. Board circuits are completed through a series of mini-games, life events and tax-related policy objectives, all built into the gameplay.
The aim of the game is to earn £1000, (the persona identified in research always wins).
During Lockdown, I re-built the game to be an online experience via powerpoint (complete with random dice rolls) and can be played on a Microsoft Teams call. It takes no longer than an hour.