Michelin Xperts EM Campaign
Michelin Xperts is a hyper-niche platform that exclusively caters to retailers of Michelin Tires in Germany. The platform provides information, education material and often offers games to drum up engagement. The client asked us to tap into the hype around The UEFA European Football Championship and present a concept that could educate and engage their members. I worked with a cross-functional team (content, art, developers) to create a game and launch a chapter on a speedy per week basis!
Re-Brief/ Status Quo / Concept Development / Wireframing / Dev Collaboration + UI / Launch / Outcome
Internal Kick-off: 20.05.2024
Project Live date: 14.01.2024
The Re-Brief
Based on the client’s request, it was decided to create an interactive game that would be educative and engaging.
’Real Michelin coaches bring the pure European Championship feeling to the Xperts with entertaining training sessions on the world of products and services - straight from the football pitch. This is how training becomes great sport.’
The re-brief was essentially creative wordplay to find a way to somehow link tires and Football together, but keep the focus on education content that is relevant to the users.
Status Quo - I
User Base Overview
Total Users: 1,604 users are registered on the platform.
Active Users: 394 users (24.6%) logged in at least once in the last six months.
Inactive Users: 743 users (46.3%) have not engaged recently, while 407 users (25.4%) have accounts but have never logged in.
Declined Users ("Verweigerer"): 60 users (3.7%) explicitly opted not to participate.
Engagement Trends:
Engagement Gaps: While the UX supports accessibility, engagement decreases significantly:
Only 24.6% of users are actively engaging.
The largest inactive user base (46.3%) highlights a retention and re-engagement challenge.
Potential Onboarding Challenge: 25.4% of users never logged in, indicating possible friction during initial onboarding or a lack of compelling content.
Our Goals:
Focus content and campaigns on the dominant age group (30–54) and interests that resonate with users in technical and professional contexts.
Target the 46.3% inactive users with tailored campaigns and reminders to re-engage them with updated or relevant content.
Concept Development
The general idea was the tie football, tires, education together, and gamify it. However the actual game mechanics were needed. In addition, the game mechanics would need to fit within the resource constraints ie person-hours, budget, timelines, practicality from the POV of the involved teams namely content (copy), art and the UX & UI team.
Campaign + training mechanics
4 Trainings to be dropped on a weekly basis across 4 weeks.
Each training contains 4 training topics, each topic contains 3 multiple choice questions
Wireframing
The fun part! I received the basic content structure for the Trainings page and the Campaign Landing Page.
Based on this I started making wireframes. Content, Art and the UX team had regular check-ins to ensure that we were all on the right track.
Client Approval + Building the backend
While the copy and art concept had been approved by the client, before proceeding with UI I threw together a quick UI-mockup so they could get a sense of what the end result would be.
I knew there would be copy and design changes coming, however to save time I started work on the back end with our remote developer team to build the structure.
UI and Dev Handover
My focus on building pixel perfect layouts, and ensuring that the developers had all assets needed (images, illustration etc).
Once the challenge was launched, and first training released, subsequent weeks became easy as it essentially required copy and image changes.
The developer team is remote so we had communicated via Figma itself and Teams, to resolve any quick questions.
Here’s a walk-through of the Game:
The Outcome
The EM 2024 Trainingscamp campaign engaged 165 participants, achieving a completion rate of 73.9%. On average, each participant completed 2.4 trainings, with 21.2% completing all four offered trainings.
Key Outcomes
Participation and Completion:
73.9% completion rate indicates decent engagement but leaves room for improvement.
Only 21.2% completed all four trainings, suggesting potential drop-off or fatigue.
Training Performance:
Correct answers: 83%, showcasing good knowledge acquisition.
False answers: 17%, concentrated in specific training modules and questions.
Top Dealer Contributions:
Reifen Müller GmbH contributed the highest participants and showed a 78.8% completion rate.
Areas of Underperformance
Training Drop-off:
Completion rates decrease as the number of trainings completed increases, with only 35 participants finishing all four trainings. Possible reasons include:Content complexity.
Time or motivation barriers.
Unclear progression cues, and/or visual hierarchy
Question Performance:
High false answer rates in some key topics (e.g., "MICHELIN CrossClimate 2," "Innovation über den Reifen hinaus") indicate content might be confusing or inadequately covered.The question “How many sustainable materials will be in future Michelin tires?” had a high error rate, reflecting unclear communication of campaign goals.
Dealer Disparities:
Some dealers significantly underperformed, with lower completion rates or fewer participant engagements.
Based on the observations above, we had the following recommendations for improvement:
1. Content Optimization
Simplify and clarify technical content for complex topics.
Use visual aids, videos, and interactive elements (like quizzes) to improve understanding and engagement.
2. Training Structure
Introduce shorter, modular trainings to reduce drop-off.
Add clear progress indicators (e.g., completion bars or milestones) to show participants how close they are to completion and incentivize continued engagement.
Gamify progression with badges, certificates, or incentives for completed trainings.
3. Engage Dealers Effectively
Provide tailored support and incentives to low-performing dealers to boost engagement.
Share best practices from top-performing dealers, such as Reifen Müller GmbH.
Ensure dealer portals are consistent, intuitive, and visually appealing.
Incorporate analytics dashboards to help dealers monitor their participants’ progress.
4. Feedback and Iteration
Gather participant feedback on confusing questions to refine training design.
Add a post-training survey with user-centric questions about navigation ease, content clarity, and motivation to identify friction points.
Monitor performance data in real time to address bottlenecks proactively.
5. Personalized Learning Journeys
Tailor the experience based on user profiles or learning styles (e.g., short interactive sessions for beginners, detailed case studies for advanced users).
Use AI-driven personalization to recommend next steps based on performance and interests.
6. Mobile Optimization
Ensure the training platform is fully responsive and optimized for mobile devices to meet users where they are.
Next steps
The client wants to overhaul their platform, and the business on a big scale and we’re currently working with them on this vision. They agree on ability to increase engagement via gamification and we hope to be able to have more occasions to pitch them in the future.
Key takeaways
While the exact same game/project may not be implemented soon, there were learnings that I would apply to any similar future projects:
Having a strong kick-off, emphasizing the need to make tradeoffs while considering company constraints right at the start.
Defining how UX + product content sounds, looks, and lives together as it reduces the number of clarifying rounds and double work.
Defining a shared vocabulary (Trainings or Challenges? Section or topic or module?)
Collaborating with the design team (which is more focused and familiar with print design so far) to improve accessibility by ensuring proper focus order and colour contrast within the current limitations (legacy code + client preferences)