Designing a learning ecosystem for sustained engagement
How we combined behavioral research, learning design and gamification to engage 100+ leaders throughout a seven-month development journey.
Domain
Discovery · Behavioral Research · Experience Strategy · Service Design · Gamification
My Role
Service Designer
Team
+5
Timeline
2021 · 7 months
Impact Overview
Scale
100+ leaders
Duration
7-month program
Engagement
~72%
Ambev, a Brazilian brewery under the Anheuser-Busch InBev umbrella, holds the title of the world's biggest beer producer, dominating roughly 69% of Brazil's market.
The company was transitioning toward a digitalized sales and distribution process. The Service Level department's management required a training on digital transformation.
BEES Academy was a leadership development program created for Service Level leaders. The experience needed to remain relevant over seven months for participants with demanding routines, different learning preferences, and different reasons for taking part.
Short-term enthusiasm would not be enough: the program needed to create repeated reasons to return without making learning feel like another obligation.
Design Challenge
How might we sustain meaningful participation throughout a seven-month journey while accommodating different motivations and limited time?
I contributed across discovery and experience strategy, from research planning, interviews and synthesis to workshop facilitation, journey design and the behavioral and gamification model.
I worked with an HR consultant, a project manager and two members of Ambev’s Learning & Development HR team.
Different leaders needed different reasons to participate
Behavioral research helped us look beyond attendance and ask what would make participation feel worthwhile throughout the program.
Interviews and synthesis revealed a central tension:
the experience needed enough structure to create momentum, but enough flexibility to fit around leaders’ limited time.
Some participants could respond to visible achievement or competition; others to mastery, recognition, rewards or the opportunity to help peers. This led to three principles:
make progress visible, create more than one path to participation and ensure recognition reinforced learning rather than replacing it.
We noticed some common points in all conversations
Development preferences
Hands-on learning
Valuing the overall experience, not just individual moments
Quick and dynamic activities that fit into their busy routines
Strong geographic identification
Experience
Team-building moments
Applicable projects
Exchange with other areas of the company
Collaboration within the team
Immersion moments
Learning formats
Lectures
Videos
Training sessions
Tests and quizzes
Different Perspectives
We observed three different perspectives regarding how they approach problems and what motivates them.
Practical Vision
“As a true Ambev person, I love a good ranking!”
Manage problems and pain points practically and agilely in their day-to-day activities. They aim to keep problems from affecting results and performance.
Motivators
Competition → High
Recognition → rankings and rewards
Results-oriented
Critical Vision
“Sometimes I feel like people just want to come in first, but there’s no real outcome behind it.”
Take a more critical and detailed approach to the company's pain points, demanding faster solutions to the problems.
Motivators
Competition → Mid
Recognition → Visibillity
Development-oriented
Genuine appreciation
Curious Vision
“What really motivates me is seeing the impact I’m making on my team!”
Primarily includes who are newly appointed to the position. Their pain points were related to onboarding and adaptation process.
Motivators
Competition → High
Recognition → Ranking
Numbers-oriented
Competition created energy, but could also exclude
Rankings and leaderboards offer immediate clarity and can activate highly competitive participants.
But the same mechanism that energizes people near the top can discourage those who fall behind, especially in a long program with inconsistent availability.
We decided not to depend on competition alone. The model combined individual and collective progression, while rankings sat alongside recognition, contribution, badges and rewards.
Performance could remain visible without becoming the only definition of success.
Visual opportunity · Leaderboard-only vs. selected model
Compare a competition-only approach with the multi-motivation ecosystem. Purpose: make the rejected alternative and design consequence explicit.
One journey, multiple ways to move forward
We designed BEES Academy as a connected ecosystem.
Bloom’s Taxonomy helped structure the learning progression. Synchronous moments created shared context, discussion and social energy, while asynchronous activities gave leaders flexibility around demanding schedules. Progression, recognition and rewards connected both modes into a continuous experience.
Visual opportunity · Bloom’s Taxonomy and learning journey
Show learning progression across synchronous and asynchronous activities. Purpose: connect learning design to the seven-month experience.
Multiple mechanics, one behavioral strategy
No single mechanic carried the experience. Rankings made momentum visible; badges recognized milestones; ambassadors encouraged contribution and peer participation; mystery boxes introduced anticipation; the reward marketplace turned accumulated progress into choice; and individual and collective goals balanced personal agency with shared momentum. Together, they supported achievement, recognition, contribution, choice and social connection.
Visual opportunity · Engagement ecosystem
Map the six mechanics by the behavior each reinforced. Purpose: show that gamification operated as an integrated system.
Every action made the next one clearer
The experience connected learning, action, feedback and recognition in a repeating cycle:
Learn → Participate → Progress → Receive feedback → Gain recognition → Return.
Rankings, badges and rewards helped participants understand progress, while new goals, contribution opportunities and marketplace choices created reasons to come back.
Visual opportunity · Behavioral feedback loop
Diagram the cycle from learning to participation, progress, feedback, recognition and return. Purpose: explain how the ecosystem supported recurrence.
Visual opportunity · Mechanics in practice
Add real screens or artifacts for rankings, badges, ambassadors, mystery boxes and the reward marketplace. Purpose: demonstrate execution and craft. Blur participant data before publishing.
The program was launched and completed in 2021, reaching more than 100 leaders over seven months. It recorded approximately 72% engagement, measured through leaders’ attendance at each activity.
This indicates sustained participation at program scale. Beyond the metric, the work created an integrated model connecting learning progression, flexible participation, social contribution, recognition and rewards.
Gamification is a behavioral system, not a layer of decoration
Engagement cannot be reduced to points or competition. In a long-term learning experience, mechanics need to reflect different motivations and remain connected to the purpose of the program. Combining individual and collective progression made the experience more inclusive. The project also reinforced the value of feedback loops: when learning, recognition, rewards and contribution support one another, the experience becomes more resilient than any isolated touchpoint. Behavioral research identified what could sustain participation; service design translated those insights into something participants could experience—and a multidisciplinary team could deliver—over time.
Credits and responsibilities
Lucas — Service design contribution
Discovery · Research planning · Interviews · Behavioral synthesis · Workshop facilitation · Journey design · Experience strategy · Behavioral model · Gamification model
Multidisciplinary team
1 HR consultant · 1 project manager · 2 Ambev Learning & Development HR team members
Visual opportunity · Team responsibilities
Map Lucas, the HR consultant, project manager and two Ambev Learning & Development HR partners. Purpose: clarify individual contribution and multidisciplinary ownership.
