EDF Energy – The Prioritiser

Challenge

Traditional training methods around task and time management are heavy on theoretical concepts with little practical or interactive elements to “learn by doing” or those that exist are quite dry in presentation.

Use Case

EDF Energy approached Make Real to create a serious game that would encapsulate the concepts of task and time management for their call-centre team managers, highlighting the key sources of demands on a day-to-day basis whilst emphasising the importance of maintaining a close eye on the team efficiencies and when they are in a non-adherence state.

Hardware

The serious game application was designed to run on the low/mid-range Windows-based PC hardware found within the EDF Energy call centres typically on the desks of team managers, to enable them to train and carry out self-learning sessions.

Build

The design team sat with team managers at EDF Energy to understand the types and sources of tasks and distractions that they encounter during their daily working routine, allowing these to be assigned weights around severity, importance and typical length of time taken to complete.

The real world system that monitors the teams of call centre staff was assessed to understand the timings and rules around when a team becomes non-adherent, before being worked into a software simulator to run within the serious game application.

Using Unity 3D engine, these design considerations were then modelled into a realistic replica of a team managers desk, with the appropriate technology devices to provide the incoming tasks and distractions. Gameplay balance and testing was carried out to determine the appropriate ramping up of difficulty as the user worked their way through the simulated working week, with the first day, Monday, introducing each task source, severity, planning interactions and the delegate ability.

The final application was provided as a standalone PC application and a web-based SCORM-compliant learning package.

Impact

The solution has so far been rolled out across EDF Energy call-centres nationwide and has proven a popular, competitive game within teams challenging each other to gain the highest score.