Grumpy King Gong 👴🏻: A gamified meta experience

ROLE  - Team design project

TIMELINE - 13 Weeks

TOOLS - DaVinci Resolve

CLIENT: Autobahn Motors

Project Overview

Grumpy King Gong is a unique meta experience that combines technology, humour, and compassion to bring people together. The concept centres around a virtual "king of the house"—a typical Singaporean Ah Gong who has become grumpy and needs cheering up. Participants are invited to send in funny selfies and drawings through a QR code. Each submission flashes across the screen, which serves as the king's display panel, and contributes to a laugh-o-meter, much to the delight of the virtual king and the audience.

As participants engage with the Grumpy King Gong experience, they not only get to share their humour with the world but also experience the satisfaction of making someone else happy.

Through this meta experience, Grumpy King Gong aims to evoke empathy among community-focused youth and encourage them to support and care for older adults. The experience also provides a fun and entertaining platform for the elderly, families, and children to connect and share their humour.

 

Problem Statement

An interactive and gamified initiative that can be blown up on the Ten Square billboard to encourage multi-stakeholders comprising NGOs and youths to engage in "sharing and caring" festivities during International Moment of Laughter Day.

 

Research

78% of community-focused youth find it important to bring joy and laughter to the elderly in their community, and most are willing to participate in a similar initiative, according to a survey.

 

Ideation

Traditionally, digital displays are flat and only provide one-way interaction. This forced me to think out of the box and brainstorm ideas that would incorporate:

  1. User-Generated Content
  2. A Gamification Challenge
  3. Appeal to community-focused youth

Thus, I came up with the following:

  • "Pebble Effect"—Youth drop in drawings of acts of kindness that are glow-in-the-dark with board zooming out to show it's a heart at the end
  • "The Grumpy King"—Youth work together and play the role of a jester to make a grumpy king on the screen laugh by submitting funny jokes, memes or images

The Grumpy King was chosen as it had higher potential for an impactful story if it was reworked into the local context. Thus, The Grumpy King became Grumpy King Gong. 

Pitch Deck

Design for the pitch deck here.

Creative Strategy