Groop, a community management organisation came to us with an idea, they wanted to make an accreditation tool where young people could gain employability skills through volunteering. Groop set out to get funding for the project, therefore we needed to produce a proof of concept and prototype to put in front of stakeholders.
​Within 2 months we were able to realise an idea into a fully functioning prototype for Groop to get more investment for the product. It’s been a huge success with many volunteers already completing their bronze, silver and gold accreditation with certifications to take to employers.
As one of the first steps, Groop gave us a rough idea of what they wanted within the app, we took a step back and refined these flows to put more of an emphasis on the awards (bronze, silver, gold) and how the user could easily achieve this through a set of well-defined steps.
We held three focus groups with volunteers and the team at Groop. These comprised of running through initial ideas all the way through to testing a live beta product, as well as interim sessions to review branding and visual direction.
It was clear that this was an educational tool, rather than a fun game.
Gamification was the perfect tool to bring the app to life, using bright colours throughout really gave it a fun, playful feel – one where peers felt like they enjoyed using the app.
The client presented the volunteers with an idea of what type of badges were required for the awards and we received sketches back from the volunteers.
Using this as inspiration, we worked with the visual design team to create a series of badges for each learning outcome within the accreditation.