We’ve all seen it: a new Microsoft 365 rollout, and suddenly everything gets likes, badges, “fun” posts and challenges. Teams, SharePoint, Viva Engage, intranet, learning portals : a bit of glitter everywhere.

And after a few weeks? People are back to their old habits.

In this session, we ask the honest question: where do playful, game-inspired ideas really help and where do they just add noise?

We come at this from two different angles: one of us works with a game design mindset, thinking in quests, progress and rewards, the other spends her time designing Microsoft 365 spaces, content and routines that people can actually live with day to day.

In the first part, we deep-dive into 5 key scenarios. The audience plays along in a live poll: for each scenario you vote “Play or Pass?”, see the results on screen, and then we quickly debate two angles:

which game-inspired mechanics could help or hurt, and

how to design the Microsoft 365 experience itself (channels, pages, flows, messages) so it supports real behaviour change.

In a fast lightning round, we run through additional 5 scenarios to reveal broader patterns: which types of M365 experiences are almost always a good fit for playful elements – and which should stay clean, simple and purely functional.

You leave with a set of design patterns for M365 adoption – where playful elements make sense, where they don’t, and how to use Microsoft 365 creatively (without gimmicks) to help people actually change the way they work.