Industry
Industry
Lowe's Virtual Store
We've produced a virtual store environment developed in the Unity game engine, with several discrete and pervasive personnel training games, for Lowe’s. The virtual store is an exact replica of a local store environment, constructed using both fully articulated models as well as flat planes with high resolution photo textures to ease system resource needs and improve performance.
Discrete mini-games include:
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Go-Back game, requiring employees to replace abandoned items in order familiarize themselves with product placement in departments and store layout
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Checkout game, which incorporates both checkout procedures as well as loss prevention situations
Pervasive mini-games include:
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Safety survey – as users navigate the environment they must mark off safety issues requiring attention
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Customer interactions – customers will randomly approach the user, and the employee must assist them by providing the optimal response
Avon Bug Guard
An interactive, casual game centered on the principles of trust, empowerment and family with a strong narrative, themed around protecting families from insects, enabling them to enjoy various outdoor activities.
Avon Fever Social Game
Avon Fever is a role playing game for sales associates that teaches and reinforces basic selling techniques as well as product knowledge about Avon’s catalog. The game is built in HTML 5 with a PHP back end, and thus works both on desktop/laptop browsers as well as tablets and mobile phones (though the display size is not optimized for phone). Users create an avatar and move through three stages, each containing multiple sales opportunities. In each one, the user must select the optimal way to approach the customer; based on their choices, they gain Confidence/Reputation points, receive specialized feedback, and have the opportunity to make a sale (non-optimal responses may lose a sale or result in a smaller sale). Player progress is tracked through Confidence/Reputation points, customers unlocked, earnings, and Award Sales levels. Users must also use the virtual Avon store to maintain stock of samples and brochures, as well as customize their avatar to “look the part” as a representative.
METIL assisted Dr. Steven Hornik of UCF’s College of Business with updating and expanding his use of Second Life in his accounting courses. METIL deployed a system, using Daden Limited’s PIVOTE technology, which allows for independent student orientations covering all the tools used within Second Life for the course. The automated orientation system reduced student usage questions by 50%. To further facilitate student assistance, METIL implemented an SMS gateway that allows students to pass messages through from Second Life chat to text messages sent to the instructor or TA, and allows the instructor to respond back to Second Life.
METIL also developed guided interactive exercises to teach the Assets = Liability + Equity equation; a secondary implementation of the guided exercise tool was developed for mobile web so students could access it outside of Second Life as needed. Student performance using these methods increased by one letter grade in a course with 800 students.
Second Life Accounting
Go for the Green
Go for the Green is a mobile web game, developed for The Willis Organization, that uses a golf theme to reinforce key sales concepts. Nine holes of the golf course are mapped to nine steps in the sales process, with each hole presenting several questions and feedback items related to that particular step. Users attempt to complete the full course by answering all questions and avoiding common "traps" in the sales process.
By using streamlined mobile web development rather than creating a specific game application, we are able to deliver this content to a wide range of user devices including iPhone, Blackberry and various Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms.
Microsoft Mobile Course
and IVR Sales Materials
METIL was tapped by Microsoft in order to assist them in developing a mobile learning strategy for their SMSG team. The team was also involved in two quick-win outgrowths of this developing strategy: a port of existing e-learning materials onto mobile devices and an IVR accessible reference source for Microsoft sales personnel.
As smart phones become more common and mobile web browsing improves, the need for mobile access to learning and training materials is more in demand and has greater impact for business professionals. We took Microsoft's existing web courses and created a SCORM-compliant mobile web template. This allows the content from Microsoft's web courses to be easily repurposed (requiring only some modifications to media assets) for mobile access with full progress tracking and scoring.
Sales professionals in particular have a strong need for on-demand, mobile access to refresher materials on their product line. Driving, however, provides challenges to many methods of delivering mobile content, such as apps or mobile web access, due to limiting ability to look at the device's screen; this is especially true now due to stricter hands-free laws in many states. In order to allow simple, hands-free access to sales data, we developed a voice recognition IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system that allows sales professionals to navigate Microsoft's product information library and select audio for listening.
Dream Corp Alternate Reality Game
Run as a demonstration for Elliot Masie's Learning 2008 conference, the DreamCorp Alternate Reality Game (ARG) provided an introduction to cross-media training and employee onboarding. The game involved several challenges on three different tracks: Compliance, Leadership and Flexible Workforce. Players took on the role of employees at fictional company DreamCorp and worked, sometimes alone and sometimes in cooperation with fellow players, to solve puzzles and complete the assigned challenges.
Portions of the game were offered through multiple avenues and media formats: printed materials (e.g. pamphlets and newsletters), emails, text messages, in-person interaction with METIL team members acting as DreamCorp employees, and a bonus task offered in Second Life.
