1.0 Inspiration
Most retail chains require their employees to complete training modules in order to be able to serve customers in an efficient and knowledgeable manner. Employees find training materials generally dry and often a momentous task to get through. All our team members have worked in retail chains where they had to complete video training, and felt that creating an app that gamifies the process, and offers a reward mechanism, would have made it feel less like a burden. In fact, studies show that 77% of employees state that they would work harder if they felt more recognized, and that employee productivity improves by 14% when incentives are offered. Because of our personal experience, and the studies we found that support the idea of offering incentives, we decided to go forward with the Home Depot challenge.
2.0 What it Does: Games and Rewards
The purpose of our app is to motivate our customer service reps to complete their training material while fully engaged. We do this by gamifying the training process and offering a reward system. In this section, we explain the game and reward features of our app.
2.1 Overview:
Home Depot has a set of training categories, each of which consist of training videos. To Gamify the App, we introduce the concept of quizzes. When an employee completes a quiz, he/she receives coins and points. The points are used to introduce healthy competition between employees. The coins are used as part of a reward system.
2.2 Quizzes:
Type 1: The Basic Quiz
After watching a training module, the employee must complete a quiz. To earn points and coins, the employee must pass the quiz. The number of coins and points earned depends on the quiz score. A score of 50%-89% results in an identical number of points and coins. To incentivize employees to remain engaged while watching the training video, and to attempt to do well, scores of 90%-100% receive double the number of coins and points. For example, and employee who scores 85% gains 85 points and 85 coins. On the other hand, an employee who scores 95% gains 190 points and coins.
Type 2: Clash of Reps - The Battle
After the employee completes a certain number of training modules, he or she qualifies to participate in live quiz battles against other employees to earn coins and points. When a qualified employee logs in, a “Battle” menu item appears on the navigation menu, as shown below.
Clicking on “Battle” will match that employee with another employee who is currently logged in and also clicked battle. When two employees are matched for a battle, they are each given a set of ten arbitrary questions based on training modules they completed. In other words, the employees don’t necessarily get the same ten questions; the questions each employee receives are meant to test that employee on training modules he or she actually completed. The employee who wins the battle gets a certain number of points and coins.
Type 3: Monthly Challenge Competition
At the end of each month, Home Depot can introduce a competition. The competition is essentially a longer and more difficult quiz. Top scoring employees receive double the number of coins, which can later be used to redeem rewards (see section 4.0).
Type 4: New Product Challenges
When an employee logs in and a new product is available, a van appears with a new product notification. Essentially, this encourages employees to complete training material related to the new product. Employees who complete the new product training quizzes within a set period of time receive double the number of points and coins.
2.4 Leaderboard:
Employees with the highest number of points are listed in leaderboards. Creating an element of healthy competition will incentivize employees to score well and hence remain fully engaged while watching the training videos. Points are reset at the beginning of each month so as to give all employees an equal chance of making the leaderboard.
We introduce several leaderboards:
Type 1: Global Home Depot Individual Leaderboard
This leaderboard consists of top ten employees in all Home Depot branches and departments.
Type 2: Global Category Leaderboard
This leaderboard consists of the ten employees who scored the highest number of points in particular categories.
Type 3: Global Home Depot Store Leaderboard
This leaderboard consists of the ten Home Depot branches with the highest number of points, introducing an element of competition between stores.
Type 4: Branch Leaderboard
This leaderboard consists of the top ten employees in a particular branch.
2.5 Rewards:
As mentioned in the overview, employees earn coins when they complete quizzes and battles. The coins can be used to implement a reward system. We chose not to specify the exact reward system so as to let Home Depot design one that fits their business needs. However, we do offer some examples.
Example 1: Cashback
Employees who make the leaderboard can exchange their coins for cash.
Example 2: Wish List
Employees can use their coins to add Home Depot merchandize to their wishlist. For example, an employee can use 50 coins to add a $50.00 item to his/her wishlist. Employees who make it to the leaderboard can choose to redeem an item from their wishlist.
Example 3: Gift Cards
Employees who make it to the leaderboard can choose to redeem their coins as a gift card.
2.6 Add Ons:
Add On 1: Admin View
We have created an admin view where the person in charge can choose from different leaderboard views to keep track of the employees progress. From the store leaderboard they will be able to look at each independent employee, their struggles and their successes as well. From the global leaderboard they will be able to see the progress of all stores and common employee struggles. Finally, from the category leaderboard they will be able to see the category most employees struggle on. Administrators will also have the ability to create, delete, and modify elements of the program using the user interface, so they won't have to know how to code.
Add On 2: Quick Search Functionality
Using the IBM Watson API, employees will be able to make quick lookups right from the home page by either uploading/taking a picture of the item in question, or trough voice recognition. Moreover, they will also have the option to quickly type into our search bar.
3.0 Implementation
At its core, this application is a full stack web application. We currently envision it as a MERN stack application, but there are a variety of other front and back end technologies that can be used to implement this application.
Given the size of the application, we did not get time to develop it. However, we did design the NoSQL database and the API endpoints. You can view our collection models in our server->models folder on github. The API endpoints can be found in the REST API Word document on github.
4.0 Challenges
The main challenges we faced were based in lack of time and improper prioritization. In 36 hours, we were attempting to build a full stack web application that incorporated every idea we came up with. This led to us building a backend and setting the foundation for a whole application, which took time away from building the frontend. This is the first Hackathon for two members of our group, so learning what exactly was expected of us and how we could best present our work from the weekend presented an additional setback to proper prioritization. We were also attempting to use React.js for the front end, with which not everyone was familiar. This presented a learning curve that took time to learn and slowed development.
5.0 Accomplishments
At the beginning of this weekend, we were four strangers from different places and at different stages of life. Throughout this hackathon, we worked incredibly well as a team, which we believe is a huge accomplishment. We were very decisive in choosing the concept for our application and integrating various challenges into our solution. In the end, we were able to incorporate the RBC, IBM, and The Home Depot challenges. The entire team provided some amazing ideas and hard work at every stage. While we may not have implemented the full stack application that we envisioned, we are all proud of the concepts we developed and would love to see them come to fruition. Finally, we feel immense accomplishment from seeing this through to the end and submitting our project.
6.0 What we learned
Each challenge we face resulted in at least one lesson learned. Primarily, we learned the importance of planning the project from the beginning and creating a definitive end goal. We had a lot of great ideas and a clear vision for this application, but it wasn’t doable within the time we had and with the current skills that we possess. We learned that we should have developed a wireframe or prototype using Invision, or a similar application, in order to demonstrate everything we wanted our app to do. We spent quite a few hours developing without clear requirements for challenges or from the hackathon itself, so we learned how important requirement elicitation really is, especially for a project with this timeframe. Most importantly though, we learned a lot about teamwork through our hacking, a lot about the different companies’ technologies and opportunities through workshops, and some of use even learned a little about React.js!
7.0 What's next for Home Depot PK Pal
Next, we would like to create a fully functional prototype with all of the elements we thought up during the hackathon. We would like to properly incorporate each solution to each challenge in order to get the best representation of our ideas. Then, we would like to actually build this as the full stack application that we intended to make and make it usable on mobile devices along with desktop.
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