Gamification was a quiz-type game implemented as a campaign in the Bank of Georgia's mobile banking app. Users began by creating a game lobby, which could be either solo or with friends (duo and trio teams). Over a 12-week period, participants received weekly tasks, comprised of 90% quizzes and 10% banking tasks. Upon completion of these tasks, users earned game coins that could be exchanged in the market for real gifts or saved for the Grand Final. In the Grand Final, all teams competed in a quiz game, with the team answering the questions the fastest winning the grand prize.

The day after I joined the Bank of Georgia, I found myself in a workshop on gamification. Feeling the extra responsibility and motivation of my first task, especially with its business impact and tight deadline, I dove in headfirst. More than 50-60 individuals were involved in this project, including those from marketing, sales, an outsourced agency, developers, data scientists, content architects, and more. It was very challenging to gather information about their needs and transform it into designs. Sometimes it was very stressful and hard to handle since I was a newcomer in the company.

There were very tight deadlines and many designs to complete. The design went through 4-5 iterations before reaching the final result. It was tested 7 times in different scenarios and stages. I gained valuable insights from users and worked very closely with developers to make it happen.

Since it was a quiz-type game, to make it look appealing, I needed to avoid the existing design system and create a more game-like style. That's how I started to develop a new design system specifically for this campaign. The challenge was that for many users, this campaign would be their first touchpoint with the brand. I needed to maintain the brand identity and feeling without using even a single component from the existing design system.

You can check Bank of Georgia's Design system here: https://bog.design/en/main

By creating a lobby, users had the choice to play solo, with one friend, or with two friends. Users needed to invite their teammates via their phone, ensuring the teammates were also Bank of Georgia users. Upon sending the invites, the invited members received a notification to join the team. Once all team members approved the request, the game started immediately.

You competed against teams of the same size, keeping it fair and fun! Every Monday for 12 weeks, participants received weekly tasks. The number of tasks depended on your team size—more players meant more tasks. By completing these tasks correctly, you earned game coins to exchange in the marketplace for real gifts. Finishing all tasks perfectly got you bonus coins, which came in super handy, especially in the Finals.

We encountered significant issues, such as the estimated traffic potentially shutting down the mobile bank, which serves 200k daily users. Working closely with developers, I found and implemented UX solutions to fix these issues. When the finals started, teams or individuals eligible for the finals got different pre-login screen with a button to go to the finals immediately, avoiding the need to log into the bank and reducing high traffic.

The Final was the most exciting part of this 3-month campaign. Over 130,000 teams total in every division awaited this moment to prove that they were the fastest and smartest in the game. The Finals launched in the same time for everyone, and each team had 20 questions to answer (the number of questions varied based on team size). Unlike the weekly tasks, the Final featured more challenging questions, but participants could use hints purchased with game coins.

This project had numerous KPIs and KBOs dependent on it. It shattered records in many ways, with the company achieving 3x more sales than last year as a result. That’s why the bank plans to continue running similar campaigns in the near future.