Coffee with Genially and Moe Ash

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Coffee with Genially. I'm here with my friend Moe Ash. Welcome to Coffee with Genially. Thank you, thank you. I'm so happy to have you here because you are one of my favorite Genially Ambassadors, my friend, and a Genially heavy user. Definitely, Genially and me are besties all the way.

I've been here since 2019. 2018? Yeah, I've been using the tool since 2019. Wow. Remember, that wasn't you, I guess that was Florina. I told her, by the way, there's an actual LMS that uses Genially. She was like, there's an LMS that puts embedded Genially? Like, yes, you don't know about it? No, we don't. And then we started the conversation accordingly, and this is how I started to be an ambassador. Yeah, I remember. isEazy.

Why? He creates amazing gamified experiences using Genially. I don't know how he actually does it, and I was like, what, who is Moe? And then I met you and you showed me one of your games, and I was like, how did you do it? You actually did it in Genially? How? And I still get amazed with all your creations. And that was Genially using the older creations, so imagine what we could do with the new ones now.

So, how did your journey into the instructional design sector begin? This is the first question that I ask everyone, because all the answers are like, by accident. I was studying psychology, or I was a teacher, and then I transitioned. It's incredible how they fall in love with the instructional design industry when they were on another path, by accident. Absolutely by accident. Before I got into instructional design, I was hoping and aiming, you know, the dream was: I'm going to be an L&D consultant.

An organizational, corporate-based L&D consultant. I'm only going to be working for big corporates, do minor work, live in Hurghada by the Red Sea and live the bohemian life, do a couple of tasks, get paid well, and that's it. That was obviously the utopian dream, until I stumbled upon a company that does business board games. And there I kind of found out that, you know what, looks like design is a thing that I do enjoy. And it went on from there: gamification and instructional design came to life both at the same time, and that was nine years ago.

Pure instructional design and gamification, that was nine years ago, I suppose. So you went straight to gamification? I went straight into gamification. At the beginning it was minor design focusing on corporate work. I got myself a diploma in performance management, I'm a certified assessment center analyst, L&D management, psychometrics, a diploma in creating competency matrices.

I was so into "I'm going to be an assessor, an L&D consultant, I'm going to be working for corporates" and all of that. I did not work on it, although I got the diplomas for it. I just went straight into instructional design and then gamification. So now I have it under my belt as part of my thought process, but I don't do anything with it. It helps me in creating that kind of solution, and it's good when I'm having conversations with clients.

This is incredible. But why do so many people call you the Alchemist of gamification? Not a lot of people know about this. Actually, I have seen it on LinkedIn and everywhere, "the Alchemist of gamification", and I needed to ask him. OK, the whole Alchemy thing started off back in 2018. You get yourself occupied with all of the gamification books and understandings, and I'm like, OK, there isn't something that I can fully utilize for the thought process that I want when I'm building a game.

Me and my team at that time, we stayed for like a year studying, and then it took us five more months, and we created our own framework. It's called The Alchemist. That is our own framework that we use in gamification design. I don't have it beside me here, but we have a deck of 35 cards, and we apply it on a matrix with specific ratios. Whenever we have a solid design and we want to turn it into a game, which is basically turning base metal into gold, hence Alchemy, we use the cards and we create a game.

The whole thing was actually built on a story of The Alchemist Supreme, who wants to unite all of the champions from all of the houses in the old ancient world back to unity and peace. And how would that happen? By discovering the art of alchemy. So the champions will be together, forming unions and coalitions to create alchemy. The different houses represent the different mechanics of gamification for learning, and each and every one of them has specific powers. Those powers represent behavioral mechanics.

So this is how we created The Alchemist deck. We've been using the deck for almost four years now, I suppose, for all of our games. We have around 16 different games that we've created. 16 different board games? Yes, 16 different board games, bar games and escape games, and three complete gamification systems that can go on for months. All were done using The Alchemist. And now, since I've said that in a different podcast and I'm pushing myself, I'm halfway through writing my book, The Alchemist, on how to do gamification. Yes, I'm working on my book right now, I'm halfway through. Wow.

That's big news. Yeah, I'm working on the book, hopefully speaking maybe in a year. OK guys, more? I don't know, I don't know. Bringing us a book, wow, congratulations Moe. Thank you. This is incredible. That's the Alchemy. And the one in your team is called The Catalyst, right? The character is actually called The Alchemist Supreme. Oh, The Alchemist Supreme. And obviously our developer, who you already know, she created The Alchemist Supreme to be a bald guy with a very big beard, wearing a robe. So a little bit of vanity is happening here. Just a little bit of vanity, yeah. He is the one that is uniting everyone.

Speaking about your team and your projects, let's think about one of your most recent instructional design projects. Can you explain your design process from idea to implementation? Because to me, every game, every project that I have seen that you and your team have been involved in is like, wow, did you actually do it in Genially? It's incredible how you actually create this, how you go from an idea to an actual project, a product.

OK, so another new thing: we've created a game just recently, it's called Gateways. It always starts off with a discovery call. I guess by the time this episode comes out, we will have already notified everyone that we have the Gateways game. So the client says: we have an issue, we want to educate leaders on how to understand their teams and their roles, not personalities, their roles and what they do. We want to offer them the ability to deliver proper feedback, how to do one-on-ones, and how that can work on developing their future leaders.

And I'm like, OK, this is nice, and how do you want to do this? We don't want to do it in a workshop, we want to do it in a game. So first, I do not think about a game, I think about a design. So first off, this was the discovery call.

Obviously this meeting doesn't need a subject matter expert. I'm already a subject matter expert in management and I've already done some of those. If it needs an SME, I'm going to be looking for an SME, whether in academia, a researcher, an expert in the field, maybe a champion in a company, or maybe a veteran that has done this more than once before.

Once I'm done with that, I create a concept. That concept would be outlines, learning objectives, the specific actions that we'd be focusing on. Once that is done, we create a draft, and we create a solid learning design from start to end. We have that in mind, and then we start to think, OK, how can we boost the call to action in this design? So what we looked into: we need to let people know about Belbin roles for team management, we want to give them feedback using SBI, situation, behavior and impact, we want to use GROW because the client asked for GROW in coaching, and the overarching concept will be 70-20-10.

So at first I usually go back to anime, the comics behind me here, anime or comics or games, so I can find myself some inspiration. At the beginning I thought, OK, maybe D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, because I always go to fantasy and mystical and medieval stuff.

And in the end, we saw that if we put them in dungeons, that's not going to be helpful. That would create a little bit of humiliation for the learner: why are we in dungeons? We're teams. So in the end we were like, it's not a dungeon, it's a gateway. The gateway would allow each and every leader to get their teams from one area to the other, as long as they can offer the right feedback if they understood their role, and they can offer the right coaching if they understood their role. And the game became a board that encapsulates all of the nine team roles by Meredith Belbin, and then people would have a token.

That token would be shifting each and every time, so the numbers that you would pick the team on keep on shifting, and people wouldn't be focusing on a specific role each and every turn. They throw a dice, the dice gives them a number, and that number might be one of the nine roles, but every time the number shifts. So they're not going to be focusing on one role, they go into different roles.

And when they do, they have to discard a card. Each and every card gives them questions about how to coach or how to give feedback to that person. If they do, they can have advantages: one time it could be choosing the role that you want to work with, another time it will be points, other times it will be scrolls of wisdom, so you can create the best team. And it goes on this way.

By the end of it, they pick the right matrix of team roles that they want for their team, and they offer us an understanding of why: because we know how to coach this, we know how to give feedback to that. And by the time all of the teams have done the work, you would find that their matrices are pretty much almost the same, they have almost the same type of ratio, and it would differ from one team to the other. That means there isn't a simple, full-fledged, bulletproof way of putting a team together. It really depends on what you want to do with the team, as long as you know how to coach them and how to give them feedback.

So how does it happen from design to implementation? The implementation is where we start: we want people to be able to coach, to give feedback, to develop. And then, since the design is good, let's go back to the game: how can we let them reach that call to action? And the design looks really good.

You are trying to put everything together, applying all the techniques, gamification, feedback, collection, rewards. In two hours. It's a two-hour game. Wow. That's it. I'm in shock, this is incredible, Moe. So you meet with a client, for example, and then you create a briefing with the expectations, what you want to achieve, what the objectives are, and then you put everything together in a game.

I have to do a briefing, I have to let the client know what's going to happen, I have to give them a prototype. I have to see if they're going to be approving the concept, the design, the framework. Do they like to see this kind of art? Sometimes the art is not very friendly to certain people. Maybe they don't want to see certain characters, because of diversity, because of accessibility, and so on and so forth. So we need to make it as targeted as possible to what the client wants and how they want to see the board, the characters, what the art looks like.

So it goes from alpha to beta, sometimes even gamma, because games are more sensitive than just presenting a design: you can either make it or break it with a specific client. That's true. And how do you measure the success and effectiveness of the courses or the games that you have designed? This is a great question.

It really depends on whether we satisfied the learning objective or not, but there's a metric here. If I'm doing a long-term project with a client, I might have further involvement than just getting to the learning level on Kirkpatrick. Maybe I'm going to be part of following up, keeping up with them, to make sure that the performance has been carried over to what they do on a day-to-day basis.

I have that with one of my clients. I've been working with a client now, we're getting into seven months, and at the end I have to give them a full-on analysis with grading, with performance indicators, on what each and every person has done with me throughout the program. And even after the program, I get some data to see whether it matches or not. So we're looking into KPIs, whether the KPIs work over time or not. This is one way. The other way is that the people have to do a specific thing at the end, and they need to verbally state it.

This just happened last week. People were playing one of our board games, it's called The Seven Wonders. The trainers told me this, because I wasn't delivering: at the end of the day, people were asking if they could buy the game. They were like, can we use the game in our work? Because it helped us understand change, it helped us understand forces and how we can deal with day-to-day work.

So this is another form of feedback, or metric, because they really came out with actual processes that they can use on the job, especially since the trainers managed to implant all of this in the game itself when giving the briefing and as they were taking them from one point to the other. So it can be long-term and it can be short-term, because that game is only for a day, on three main concepts, and other programs can take a long time. There's another gamification system that was done for 2,735 employees across three months. Wow.

It was a big gamification system. We had to make it gamified in microlearning nuggets. We had to give them specific prompts on which piece of learning they would have. We used to deliver it to them on Mondays and Thursdays at specific timestamps, and we targeted timestamps, geolocations, answers, views, how many times they viewed it. We had a leaderboard, we had specific scarce badges that some might have and others might not, we had a global leaderboard and weekly leaderboards for three months.

And then we did an analysis, we did surveys, we talked with the client, and we visited the client a month after. We started to see that there had been an increase in the use of what they had been learning about their value model in the day-to-day meetings and the day-to-day briefings, based on the stories that were mentioned in the game. So that's another form of making sure that this is successful, this is effective. So when you're looking at it, it's not only design.

It's design, it's data, and also how far you are trying to measure the performance output. The performance improvement is not going to be increasing 100%, but that tad is what we're looking for. Just that step into performance change is what we're looking for. If that happened, then we've already offered the learner the autonomy to continue on. Wow, it increases motivation, and I believe that in the end they feel more engaged with the content that they're actually consuming.

Yep, because at that time, with the 2,700, it was using push notifications on their phones, using mini Genially creations in a mobile format, and chatbots and AI that would be answering them back. That's an amazing use case. It was a use case, yes, and it was one of the biggest companies here in my country. And it worked because it had to be not only engaging, but the user experience had to be simple.

Yeah, and they need to get rewards on it: you got the right answer, you did this, you did that. They get feedback. Obviously I'm not trying to promote here, but because we can easily offer people feedback on wrong and right in Genially, and we can easily embed it even in mobile and create it for mobile use, it helped us in doing this. Amazing.

I have a mixed question for you: what are some of your personal and professional goals? Personal: I need to lose some weight, because I've gained a lot of weight recently. I haven't been very avid when it comes to going to the gym these days, and I have to do that. This morning I had to go to the gym and I'm like, you know what, it's going to cost so much time, I have to go to the office. So losing weight has always been a personal goal, because I've been going up and down with the weight.

And another goal, which I can consider both personal and professional, is finishing the book and promoting The Alchemist framework, trying to patent it. And another goal is to be able to take this to one of our biggest conferences, which is ATD, so I can see if globally it can be recognized or considered in the light of the research that came from it. I'm sure it will be. Actually, one of your videos at ATD Toolbox Tips was such a success, everybody was sharing that video. Thank you so much, I hope it works.

It was an incredible video, and guys, if you haven't seen Moe Ash's video at ATD, you need to watch it, it's still there on YouTube. There are two videos, one for branching scenarios and the other one for Genially. It's amazing. I have seen on LinkedIn people commenting about that, and the way that you explain things so easily. You have that magic, you have that gift, actually. Thank you.

Let's talk about Genially. How did you discover Genially? 2018, let's go back. Obviously it was by accident. During COVID. Yeah, during COVID a lot of traffic started to happen in L&D. There were many virtual conferences, many virtual webinars, many people were promoting so many different things, and you got exposed to new LMSs, to new tools.

One of the authoring tools that I was trying to discover alongside Storyline was isEazy. isEazy is another Spanish tool, and it's very user friendly, it's web based, but it's pretty expensive. I'm so sorry to say this, it's pretty expensive, it's a lot of euros. And when I paid for it the first time, because I was doing some work for a client, I discovered there was an embed, and then this logo right there, the Genially logo.

It's like, what is that? I clicked on it, I did the free trial, and I started to do some stuff, and the client actually liked it. And afterwards, during those virtual webinars, I'm like, why not try Genially? Let's try this one, I discovered that too, why not? So it was the form of community that we had, where we were trying to help one another during that time, and it helped spread.

And accidentally, afterwards, I found there was a Facebook group. At that time it was Pedro, I suppose, Pedro who picked me up from Facebook, then handed me over to Florina, and then from Florina I became an ambassador, and here I am with you for the past couple of years now. Yes, whoa, it happened. I know he is creating amazing stuff with Genially, and he's always doing amazing webinars with us, partnering with us and showing his magic. I stopped using other e-learning tools, to be completely honest, so sorry. And every time that we have a webinar, you are like our support in the chat.

Because you know all the answers. People get stuck on something and you start writing. It's incredible to have your support in our webinars, we need more of that. But in your experience as a heavy user and Genially Ambassador, how does Genially help create engaging, gamified learning experiences, in your opinion?

Some of the stuff that happened with Genially recently offered that help. Before, in Genially, we didn't have the many different forms of animation, and the integration functions were pretty minimal. We basically used logic: we were using timers, we were using the integrations, we were using some of the embedding tools, to use Genially to create something that would be easier for the learners. What helped at the beginning is that we can build it for mobile, we can build it for landscape.

We can build it and send it in a direct link, we can embed it. At that time we could only embed it in an iframe and send it in the LMS. That was so easy and so simple, because with other tools we couldn't do that: you had to either learn a lot of code or go into a frenzy of triggers, which happens in many other e-learning tools. Not that it's bad, but sometimes I don't need that much functionality, I don't need to be a wizard when it comes to using all those tools. So that was the first step.

Now, the templates in Genially helped out, not to use them as they are, but to show me that you can actually do this. On other authoring tools, you have to see people doing something and then you get the inspiration, but Genially kind of cut time and corners for us, because the templates showed me, OK, so I can do spinning wheels, I can play with the animation. And that helped. Then things started to become better.

I'm going to give a lot of credit to S'CAPE, to the French and the German teams of S'CAPE. I hold a lot of respect for you guys, you're amazing. They offered code that I can plant inside, and I was like, OK, so I can put code in. When that happened, all hell broke loose, because now I can do complex interactions. I don't need to write code, I can put code in, I can copy code.

This way I know how to make learners see different variables, different assets happen at different timings. I can play with the animation, I can manipulate some templates to do what I want. I can do gamified creations not only for e-learning, I can use them for physical classes. And I'm pointing there because the classes are right there, two offices away from here. So I can do it for physical classes, I can do it in online classes. At the beginning I used to use it in virtual programs, then in physical programs, and then I was like, so why not make a board game and let the people figure out all of the questions and the interactions using an app?

Why do an app? Let's make it in Genially and let them interact using Genially, because app building is going to take me so much time. So what does Genially offer? A good, simple user experience and a user interface that can create. You said something important: Genially is a no-code authoring tool. For people who are starting in this instructional design industry and don't know how to begin, it's easy to learn how to do it, as you said, from templates, from watching a webinar, from our Genially Academy.

It's very intuitive. But if you would like something more advanced, you can do some coding with the features if you want. I believe that it's a tool that stands alone but also complements other tools well, if you would like to use it with other tools. And the point is, now I can put questions in and offer the learners feedback. Now I can track their activities.

Now I can let each and every learner... Our new features are on fire. Yeah, specifically the point that now my learners go in using their name, which is tied to the IP address, and it's feasible for them to continue the experience without putting Genially inside an LMS. So it's an encapsulation on its own, away from that.

Now Genially has SCORM, so now I can jump over the fence. Every time a client asked me, can you do SCORM? Yes, I can do SCORM, but not using this tool, using another tool. Now I can do SCORM, now I can control it. Now I can even have no LMS and use Genially as a mini LMS that can give me timestamps, traffic, activities, how many times the learner went through it, what the answers were, everything.

So to me it became a no-brainer to just depend on it for everything that I want. I know I'm biased, I know everyone that hears me talking right now will be like, oh, he's so darn biased. I am biased, OK? Because you know what, I used to pay a lot of money for so many different things. And I love having so many different tools, but if one tool offers me everything that I want, why not? Who cares? I am biased because it offers me ease of use.

It's incredible. I always ask you, how did you do it? And you always say it's completely made in Genially, everything has been made in Genially. Even for me it's like, whoa, how do you actually create this? And yes, it's incredible that users have all the features, endless possibilities to mix them with each other and give them different uses, and to see different results.

And I also have to give a thumbs up: I'm not the best Genially developer. TJ is the main developer here. She's the one that creates custom creations inside of Genially. She's the one that taught me, oh, you can do this. I'm like, how did you do that? I did it in Genially. Like, teach me, teach me, teach me, Gypsy Woman, how did you do that?

She is the one in our team that creates mind-blowing stuff using Genially, and she knows nothing about coding. She is oblivious to coding. She just understands the logic of how things should be, and she plays with that logic. It's incredible. Wow, it was wonderful to hear about your experience with Genially, because it's always like, how do you actually create gamified activities using only Genially? I believe we need to have a webinar about this.

In your opinion, what skills does an instructional designer need today? I'm going to say this over and over: systems. I don't really call myself an instructional designer to anyone else, only to people that understand instructional design. To people that understand instructional design, I'm going to say I'm an instructional designer. To everyone else I'm going to say I'm a systems designer. I love systems. Systems is understanding the complete iceberg model.

So this is the event that the learner would see: what are the patterns, what kind of behavior do you want to foster, what form of loops do you want to put the learner in, what do you want to reinforce, and what do you want to balance and stop. This is a complete body of knowledge called systems thinking, by Peter Senge. So I love systems. Gamification is systems, instructional design is systems. I'm not in love with instructional design, I'm in love with creating systems.

So you need to think about your ID journey, your ID work, in the form of: how can I make the best system for the learners? That system can end up with a clear, measurable, achievable learning objective. If that is possible, the system works. If that's not possible, you're not doing instructional design. And if you look at all of the books, Karl Kapp, Rance Greene, Cathy Moore, Julie Dirksen, Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction, they're all talking about the same thing in different genres, using stories, using data, using whatever they're using. They're looking into how can I make a system work.

That's the point. So think in systems and consider data. Data is always your friend. Wow, this is catchy: systems. It's systems all the way. And for example, if I'm transitioning from teaching to instructional design, how can I get into systems? I believe the two holy books that we can depend on in this area are Map It by Cathy Moore, so you can understand what action mapping is. It's an amazing system, an amazing framework, not a model, a framework.

And also Julie Dirksen, both of her books, the elephant one and the other one, which is Design for How People Learn. And obviously, I'm trying to remember the name of the book, it was by Luke Hobson. I don't want to butcher the name. Hold on, Luke is a friend, I don't want to say the name of his book badly. What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming an Instructional Designer.

That's a very, very good book. Oh, I remember when he launched it, it's amazing. I remember going through it. I was going to say "what I knew", no, no, "what I wish I knew before becoming an instructional designer". So for any person that is getting into instructional design, whether you're going into corporate, higher education, K-12, come on, you just need to know certain things. If you can go through those three books, you'll be more than on your way, you're in really good hands.

If you're willing to take the route forward with absolute studying, you can find all of this and more: go for the Do It Messy book by Robin Sargent, and apply something that is so simple. I know I'm talking about friends of mine, I know I'm biased again. Who cares? I'm biased to my friends, I'm biased to their work. Not Cathy Moore, I would not say that, those are great, great books. Cathy Moore and Julie Dirksen are not my friends, they're people that I look up to, but Luke and Robin are my friends and I love their work. So yes, I'm biased to my friends, who cares?

Any advice for future instructional designers or transitioning teachers? Read about instructional design before getting into it, because some people think it's all roses and rainbows. It's a daunting job. It needs a lot of studying, and it never ends. And I must say, I'm so sorry, I do not see anyone as a guru, a thought leader, an expert. What I love about all of the names that I've mentioned and others is that they all consider themselves learners.

No one is bigger than the other, no one is greater than the other. They just want to be better people helping other people do what is needed. So yes, read about it, and no one's an expert. We're all learners here, and it's a good community, it's a community that gives. We're all helping one another here. Yeah, and actually I believe that you're always learning, because in this industry, in the past years, there are always new tools emerging, and techniques.

Everything is happening so fast, so you need to keep learning. For example, right now it's AI, VR, all the multiple techniques that are using AI. Yeah, AI right now is on fire, and it will be on fire in the next years. Well, Moe, you know that we ask the last guest to suggest a question for the next guest. Karl Kapp was our last guest, and he asked us to ask you: what do you eat to stay so fit? I don't eat. What do you do? No, please. I'm having a lot of coffee. OK, OK. I'm having a lot of coffee. Be honest.

I'm honest, I'm honest. I'm on a diet. I'm doing a lot of coffee and 20-hour intermittent fasting, plus working out to get myself back in shape. 20-hour intermittent fasting, with no sugar. No sugar. I don't like sugar in my coffee or tea, it's always just coffee. I need coffee, water, coffee, coffee, coffee. And then I go back home like a corpse, and eat a lot of protein, a lot of chicken, a lot of chicken liver, a lot of fish, and I sleep. That's it.

I'm trying, I'm trying hard. So you have a healthy diet, you're healthy. Not really, not really. I'm not extremely healthy, and you already know that I'm not a very healthy person. I used to be, but not anymore. What would you like to ask our next guest? Since I kind of know who's the next guest, I'm going to be asking this question.

How are you so calm all the time? You're so calm. He's like the ocean on a spring day, he's always so calm, so serene. So please, how are you so calm all the time? Spoiler alert, who is the next guest? I know who he is, so I'm going to say: dude, how are you so calm? Actually, not dude, big brother, because I've always been calling him Big Brother. Big Brother, how are you always so calm, what do you do? I will ask him that.

What pills do you take? Tell me your medicine, tell me your poison, what do you do? Oh my God, we have his interview pretty soon, so I will ask. Thank you, Moe, for being here with me today. Thank you for everything, for sharing your knowledge with us, your expertise, for your honest opinion. Your non-biased opinion as well. Nope, unapologetic.

Congratulations on your book and everything that you have achieved. You are a person that we actually value and admire here at Genially, and not only because you have created amazing things in Genially, but because you have helped us to improve our platform as well. Your feedback, your thoughts, your opinion and how you collaborate with us, we value that. So thank you very much for everything, you are a great, great professional, and I'm so happy to interview you.

I'm so happy to be here with you, and I'm happy that I'm doing the interview with you, by the way. Thank you. We will do amazing things together, maybe a use case with one of your projects. More spoilers. No more, no more. Thank you very much. Guys, see you in another episode of Coffee with Genially, with the unknown person whose name Moe almost said. Thank you very much for being here with us in this episode of Coffee with Genially. Bye bye.