Image Credit : All images were created by the project's Lead Designer - Lara Reis
Project Overview
UCB Impact Aid 2.0: Leveraging innovative design, technology, and gamification for enhanced alignment, engagement, and sales performance.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Richard Watt: Strategy Lead
Costis Los: Delivery Lead
Lara Reis: UX/UI Designer
David Huai: Technical Lead
Jemin Patel: Front End Development
Sandip Singh: Back End Development
Sanjith Santhosh: QA
Axis Comms: Communications Partners
Project Brief
In today's fiercely competitive business environment, companies encounter significant hurdles that demand prompt attention to optimize performance, encourage the right team behaviours, and ultimately stimulate progress. UCB, a multinational biopharmaceutical organization, sought the expertise of Journey to discover innovative solutions to address these challenges.
Impact Aid is a tablet-based app that was initially developed as an MVP in 2022 to test key assumptions about how modern digital solutions can be created to help nurture positive behaviours and improve sales performance. The app was designed to support customer activity relating to EULAR – a revered annual pharma congress which is key to the UCB’s strategic marketing agenda each year.
Fast forward to the present year, the product underwent a thorough review and enhancement process, assuming a central role in the client's engagement and communication strategy for the 2023 EULAR Congress. Embracing a collaborative co-creation journey, marked by agile sprints spanning six months, Impact Aid 2.0 was launched - a gamified digital app engineered to empower sales and medical teams across Europe. Utilizing challenges, leaderboards and rewards to drive desired behaviours, the Impact Aid helped foster better communication and improved reporting and execution.
The Impact Aid led to significant increases in customer-facing activities this year aligned with the strategic objectives of the congress. The app was also extended to support another important congress, a testament to its scalability and importance in delivering the desired key performance indicators (KPIs) and outcomes.
Project Need
Using gamification to nurture the right behaviours, Impact Aid 2.0 offered unique features and functionality that contributed to its success.
Each challenge in the Impact Aid 2.0 was specifically designed to support UCB's KPIs for the EULAR Congress. Challenges were personalized based on roles and tailored to reflect the various customer activities required before, during, and after the event. Moreover, challenges adhered to local regulations, ensuring compliance with rules regarding the volume and frequency of customer interactions. Successfully completing challenges rewarded players with points and badges, ultimately helping them climb their individual, regional and team leaderboards.
Weekly automated reports were also a big part of the product this year, whereby players, managers, and UCB’s leadership team were kept up to date with progress, app usage and, more importantly, customer activities across Europe. This approach facilitated better alignment, focus, and execution throughout EULAR. As a bonus, winners were announced regularly to celebrate players and teams at the top of leaderboards at the end of each week and overall.
Through collaboration with UCB's IT and CRM teams, we developed a data strategy to support each challenge and supporting activity. Users could access personalized dashboards, progress trackers, and dynamic leaderboards at team, country, and regional levels.
In addition to engaging game mechanics, Impact Aid provided users with practical resources to enhance customer conversations. Timely nudges and notifications were implemented to motivate appropriate activities at the right moments.
User Experience
Although most users were already familiar with the app as they participated in last year’s MVP, their experience was elevated significantly this year. Through a series of diagnostics calls as part of the discovery phase of the project, in combination with insights and data that we gathered last year, our focus was not only to improve the look and feel of the tool but also to enhance the user experience with features and functionality that catered to their needs.
Despite existing platforms and tools available for their day-to-day tasks, the Impact Aid stood out with its intuitive user experience (UX), modern arcade-like user interface (UI), and the element of friendly competition through challenges and leaderboards. These aspects captivated the end users and, combined with the embedded tools and resources, delivered a valuable and enjoyable experience. It provided a positive incentive for maximizing customer opportunities during the EULAR Congress, acting as a 'carrot’ rather than a ‘stick’.
Project Marketing
The Impact Aid achieved exceptional user adoption, with 95% of the target population registering for and actively using the tool, uplifting from 80% the previous year.
This year, UCB saw a significant 65% increase in customer interactions and activities during the pre-Congress phase compared to the previous year. Similarly, the during-Congress phase experienced uplifts of over 35% compared to the previous year. Moreover, the new designs and enhanced user experience increased engagement with Impact Aid this year by 160%. The app also facilitated viewing resources more than 4,200 times, and challenge instructions were read almost 2,000 times (+220% by its 160 users, a testament to the engaging new and improved user experience that was designed).
The success of Impact Aid over the last couple of years has prompted UCB to expand the app’s functionality and reach in 2023, making it available for other areas of the business and enabling its continuous support for strategic events and agendas while driving enhanced activity.
Project Privacy
In relation to this project, there is not specifically anything we need to state regarding privacy.
Digital - Business Operations
From managing personnel, project management and customised apps and tools for specific business processes and tasks, what will stand out here will be those that make it easier for businesses to run both day to day operations and improve their business functionality and efficiency.
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