Goldfish: Gamifying Retention for Frontline Workers

Bowlero was losing tens of millions annually. Turnover hit ~160% per year. Every shift, managers scrambled to fill gaps from callouts. Training was inconsistent across venues, and leadership had no reliable way to recognize or reward top contributors across 11,000 workers.

Reduce employee turnover and decrease callouts to stabilize the workforce at Bowlero venues. Provide a standardized training system to reduce inconsistencies in onboarding and career progression. Increase employee engagement through gamified incentives.

A gamified workforce engagement platform combining:

Standardized Training through quiz modules covering company policies and drink recipes.

Competition and Incentives via leaderboards tracking performance (attendance, quiz completion, upsells).

Recognition System with venue-wide challenges rewarding high performers with tangible rewards.

We explored a high-fidelity game concept where employees competed to support training, goal tracking, and center-wide challenges. While exciting, technical constraints led us to a more practical gamification model.

SpaceQuest: Employees worked together to reach distance milestones, unlocking cash bonuses and ship upgrades to accelerate progress.

Buildy: Completing tasks unlocked hexagonal panels for a shared or personal map, creating a visual monument of their connection to Bowlero.

While integration was feasible, maintaining engagement required specialized developers. Given the scope, we opted for a more practical gamification approach.

With the concept and direction set, I gathered early visual feedback to avoid last-minute stakeholder changes. I created three designs focused on gamifying hourly work and one with broader appeal, then presented them to leadership.

1. User Research and Interviews Conducted qualitative research with 20+ employees across senior leaders, venue managers, and hourly workers. Identified pain points around turnover, lack of recognition, and training gaps.

2. Concept Ideation and Validation Explored three MVP concepts: Training and Career Pathing, a Narrative-driven Gamification MVP, and a Competition MVP with venue-based leaderboards. Leadership selected a hybrid merging Training + Competition.

3. Design and Prototyping Created a minimalist, data-centric UI for easy adoption. Developed quizzes, challenges, and performance tracking dashboards.

4. Pilot and Iterations Launched in select venues with weekly active usage tracking. Early metrics: 72% active usage, 83% quiz completion, 42% goal achievement. Adjusted difficulty levels based on user feedback. Optimized real-time feedback loops so workers learned about their performance at shift-end instead of the next day.

Callouts dropped by 13.54%

Increased engagement among hourly workers

Strengthened camaraderie and manager-worker relationships

Projected to reduce turnover costs by $6 million in year one

Expand platform across more venues and frontline roles

Refine leaderboards and goal tracking to account for different venue sizes

Improve AI-driven personalized training and career tracking

Collaboration: Heyo did the logo design and animation for Goldfish.