Finding clarity through exploration: A Discovery Engagement for Activate Games
Unifying a digital landscape for of the nations largest Protestant churches
Role
Tools
Project Type
Objectives
The Business Problem
The Engagement
I led a three-phase discovery engagement to answer whether a native app would create enough value for users and the business to warrant the investment. The scope covered the full picture: in-person experience, existing digital presence, and the gap between what Activate offered and what users expected.
The phases: Discover (on-site observation, surveys, competitive analysis, tech audit) → Synthesize (journey mapping, personas, service blueprinting) → Recommend (site mapping, user flows, technology guidance).
One key constraint shaped everything: Activate’s tech stack was fragmented and lacked integration capabilities. Any recommendation had to work within that reality.
Goals & Constraints
The mobile app question was the headline, but the engagement was designed to go deeper. Before any recommendation could be made, three core business questions needed answers:
How do you turn a first-time visitor into a repeat customer?
Understanding what drives return visits and what gets in the way was central to the engagement.
How do you fill the week, not just the weekend?
Weekday bookings were underperforming. Whether the solution was digital, operational, or both, the research needed to surface what was keeping customers away and what might bring them in.
Where else is value being left on the table?
Beyond the app question, i was tasked with identifying any additional opportunities where improvements could meaningfully impact the business.
The Stakeholder Landscape
The engagement was sponsored by the owner and CTO of Activate’s American operations. The client wanted a recommendation they could act on with confidence, and a foundation that would support a well-built product rather than a costly rebuild down the line. ROI wasn’t a metric to track after launch but the project itself.
Constraints
The technical landscape added a layer of complexity that influenced the entire engagement. Activate’s existing systems were built across several platforms that didn’t easily communicate with each other and, critically, the current tech stack had significant limitations in its ability to integrate with future technologies.
The Research Plan
The engagement was structured across three deliberate phases, each building on the last:
Phase 1: Discover
On-site safari observation, user surveys, competitive analysis, and a full technology audit. We needed to understand how users experienced Activate in person, how competitors were handling the digital layer, and what the technology could realistically support.
Phase 2: Synthesize.
User journey mapping, persona development, affinity diagramming, empathy mapping, service blueprinting, and user stories. This phase transformed raw research into structured insight connecting what users said, felt, and did into a clear picture of where the experience was working and where it wasn’t.
Phase 3: Recommend.
With the evidence assembled, we moved from insight to direction giving the client a concrete, actionable way forward grounded in everything the research had revealed.
What We Found
Three themes emerged consistently across every research method:
Game familiarity
Guests lacked context to get the most out of their visit. High noise levels made instructions hard to hear. Confusion was common, especially for first-timers.
Timing and Planning
Wait time uncertainty was the single biggest pain point. Guests wanted to feel their time was respected. Digital queues, estimated waits, and faster check-in were trust signals.
Social and Novelty
The strongest drivers of return visits weren’t price or convenience. They were community and novelty: competing with friends, themed events, exclusive programming, and new challenges to pursue.
Other learnings
Competitive analysis helped to set the bar for for user expecations. TopGolf, Dave & Buster’s, and similar venues were already using apps for reservations, rewards, push notifications, and gamified engagement. Leveragin the competitve analysis and the Bartlys Player Types to catagorize user the analysis showed exactly what each user type (Achievers, Socializers, Competitors, Explorers) would want from a digital layer.
The service blueprint revealed an additional issue: operational fragmentation was manifesting directly in the guest experience as wait times, inconsistencies, and workarounds.
The Recommendations
Build the app.
Prioritized features, each traceable to a specific user need: account and reservation management, digital waivers, push notifications, home-screen wait times, in-game time extension, badge and stat tracking, leaderboards, group competitions, score sharing, and an event calendar.
Impact
Activate is left with more than an app recommendation. The engagement delivered a prioritized feature set, a competitive landscape analysis, a clear read on internal operational gaps, and new business opportunities — competition formats, programming concepts, in-venue upgrades — that emerged directly from user research.
Rather than waiting for an app, Activate began applying the findings immediately: improving on-site experiences, tightening internal processes, and building a clearer framework for evaluating future technology investments.
Reflectionsw
The biggest surprise: users weren’t asking for better technology. They were asking for better ways to connect with each other.
The hardest problem: communicating tech stack constraints to a client clearly and constructively, framing limitations as a sequencing challenge rather than a dead end.
What it taught me: the best discovery processes bend when insights demand it and internal systems conversations can help to drive clairty for both the team and the client.