When everyone worked side by side in an office (remember those?), team bonding meant something sporty in the park, an offsite with trust exercises, or perhaps an annual awards ceremony to recognize achievements.
But when your entire team is remote, how do you engender a sense of togetherness, build a culture, sign on for shared goals, and celebrate significant milestones?
“Social gaming is the answer,” says Aiman Batool, Founder and CEO of Piffle, which is currently part of the Google for Startups Accelerator: Voice AI.
Batool is a conversation designer who studied Cognitive Science and Psychology at the University of Toronto, focusing on human-machine symbiosis as well as perception and attention research. She then attended Stanford’s continuing education series in AI and machine learning.
However, during the pandemic, Batool, like many of us, experienced profound isolation, so she decided to get a side gig as a barista in a local coffee shop. It was there that she found a way to take her academic research into the commercial realm.
“It was that job which gave me the idea for Piffle,” she tells us. “During onboarding, my trainer said: ‘Are you a gamer? Because we all play via Discord.’ That was my introduction to how gaming could shape a workplace. I observed how that team of baristas functioned as a pack. The bonding they built from games was present in how they collaborated at work.”
Essentially, Batool realized that people who game together, gel together and can become a cohesive, highly functioning work unit. “There was a kind of social connection in that work environment that I had never experienced,” Batool says. “I would sit in my breaks watching them and think to myself ‘whatever this is, it needs to be in every workplace.'”
During her downtime, Batool sketched the concept behind Piffle. Her second brainwave was spotting the potentially profitable gap in current workplace wellness programs.
“Therapy, meditation, and fitness are all important in supporting mental health, but our wellness programs are lacking well-designed solutions for social connection,” explains Batool. “Google’s Project Aristotle draws on Harvard’s Dr. Amy C. Edmondson’s research into psychological safety as the lead determinant in creating effective teams. We build safety through social connection. That’s where Piffle comes in. We’re building a platform that will help people feel a deeper connection to their workplace.”
Piffle is still in beta, incubating at Google for Startups Accelerator: Voice AI, so a lot of the details are either still being worked out or are under wraps. But Batool tells us that Piffle is a mobile app that companies will be able to offer employees to build teams. It will connect individuals via the voice-activated Google Assistant, which will offer interest-based social activities for teams while championing wellness as a cultural value.
“Utilizing the Google Actions functionality, the Piffle onboarding experience will allow people to personalize 3D avatars and create player profiles, selecting interests and causes that they care about,” says Batool. “They then enter a team portal which leads to the pre-game lobby experience—a virtual space for teams to socialize in their downtime, with access to game rooms, group chats, and other playful features offering opportunities for social interaction.”
Once inside their dedicated spaces via Piffle, people play games built around experiences to promote team unity, with a focus on wellness. For example: Let’s go outside and take a breather. Logged into Piffle, all remote team members take their devices and leave the office. The break is sanctioned, but no one feels alone. Due to the gamification via Piffle, they’re all acting as virtual companions to each other, wherever they are—staying as a team, despite the distance that separates them.
Batool got on Google’s radar when she pitched her Piffle prototype at Voice Launch. The Google Assistant investment team were in the audience, and, not long afterward, they invited her to join the Google for Startups: Voice AI Accelerator.
This gives Piffle access to “Google’s network of professionals, investors, founders from the broader Google for Startups ecosystem, 1-1 mentorship across every aspect of building a startup, training on important topics like diversity and inclusion, workshops from industry experts and support with fundraising, plus a wealth of research and best practices in building effective team cultures, which has been a great learning tool for us at Piffle,” Batool says.
The business model is still evolving, but it’s likely Piffle will launch initially as a consumer app with select features via a “freemium” offering, leading to a subscription. “Our main focus will be on forming B2B partnerships targeting corporate wellness programs, as an enterprise offering, thereby keeping the app completely free for every subscribed employee,” she says.
Although it’s under the “social gaming” umbrella, Batool assures us that Piffle won’t be another time waster app to distract the user from the mind-numbing banality of quotidian existence (looking at you, Candy Crush). For its founder, it’s more about saving our collective sanity.
“My undergraduate research on human-machine symbiosis has deeply influenced my approach to product design and innovation, and I believe we are on the brink of an exciting turn in our relationship with technology,” says Batool. “We can now design highly immersive experiences that influence our perception, attention, and emotion in a way that hasn’t happened before.”
Cynically, many might say that technology has contributed to our fractured sense of self in the past few years. Batool doesn’t disagree, but she’d like to be part of the solution moving forward.
“Yes, a great deal of our past technological innovation has contributed to a crisis in wellness,” she says. “But, we now have the ability to learn from that and define best practices that put mental health first. Gamification is being refocused from motivating users to do what the business wants them to do, towards helping people do more of what they want to do. We are witnessing this in movements within gaming, where replayability and hook are being used in helping people become healthier, not addicted.”
In fact, for Batool, Piffle could become part of re-imagining the workplace itself.
“The pandemic has been a catalyst in introducing a human-centered approach to designing work cultures,” she points out. “As businesses, we’re back at the drawing board asking ourselves some fundamental questions, like ‘What is the best way to set up our offices? How can we support our employees? What is our new normal?’ Piffle hopes to be a supportive partner for businesses in this defining time, helping them build their wellness strategy in the years to follow.”
Piffle is looking for beta users; sign up here to try it. And if you fancy your chances in the future of social gaming, check out the Google for Games Developer Summit, which kicks off on July 12.
