Bring senior behavioural design thinking into your leadership team
For organisations working on health, sustainability, and other long-term challenges where engagement needs to be designed with care.
A message from Pete Baikins
“What would behaviour change look like if engagement was treated as part of the strategy, not something added later?”
Over the last 25 years at Gamification+, I’ve seen the same pattern more than once.
A team launches with energy, builds in a few engaging features, and expects momentum to follow. For a while, it does.
Then participation tails off.
Usually, that is not because people lacked creativity or effort. It is because engagement was treated as an add-on rather than something shaped into the wider system from the start.
When you are dealing with long-term health, sustainability, or other complex behaviour change challenges, gamification and behavioural design need to be part of how decisions are made.
That is the thinking behind my Fractional Chief Gamification Officer work.
I join a small number of organisations each year to help bring behavioural thinking into leadership conversations, product choices, and the day-to-day reality of delivery.
Why a Fractional Chief Gamification Officer (CGO)?
Because knowing what to do is not the same as building it into the work.
A one-off piece of consultancy can be useful.
But sometimes what is needed is ongoing judgement, not just a report.
A Fractional CGO helps keep engagement, participation, and behaviour change in view as the work evolves.
- Strategic input at the right moments: I join product and leadership conversations so behavioural design is considered while decisions are being made, not after the fact.
- Bridging research and practice: We take useful theory and translate it into something your team can actually use with your particular audience, constraints, and goals.
- Building internal capability: Part of my role is to help your team become more confident in thinking about motivation, habits, friction, and player journeys.
- Ongoing refinement: Behaviour change is rarely tidy. We look at what is happening, make sense of the patterns, and adjust as the product or community develops.
Who I work with
I tend to work best with organisations where better engagement supports something that genuinely matters.
This usually includes:
- Health & Wellbeing: Supporting adherence, healthier routines, and sustained participation over time.
- Sustainability & Local Resilience: Designing for stewardship, contribution, return, and longer-term community habits.
- Ethical Engagement: Creating experiences that respect people’s motivation rather than simply extracting attention.
How we work together
I do not believe in handing over a strategy deck and disappearing.
If the work is serious, the partnership needs to be serious too.
Here is what that often looks like:
- Aligning the roadmap: We begin by looking closely at where the organisation is heading and what behaviours actually matter over the next 12 months. The aim is to build gamification and behavioural design into the foundations of the product or service, rather than layering it on at the end.
- A seat at the table: I join regular product or leadership meetings as an active partner. That means I can challenge assumptions, spot issues early, and help shape decisions before they become expensive to undo.
- Understanding what people are really doing: We look at the evidence from user behaviour alongside what the research suggests. The point is not just to see whether something worked, but to understand why it worked, where it struggled, and what needs refining next.
Let’s see if we’re the right fit
I only take on a limited number of Fractional CGO roles at any one time.
That keeps the work properly hands-on and gives each partner the depth of attention it deserves.
If you are looking for ongoing strategic support rather than another one-off intervention, I’d be glad to have a conversation.
Why Gamification+?
A quarter-century of gamification and behavioural design, applied in practice.
We aren’t just consultants; we are pioneers in the field. From hosting the Health Points podcast to distributing the world’s first gamified CRM, our history is built on the belief that play can solve the world’s most serious problems.
Gamification+ has always been about more than novelty.
The work has been shaped by a long-standing belief that play, participation, and better behavioural design can help tackle serious problems — especially in health, wellbeing, sustainability, and community life.
- Long-standing field leadership: Former Chair and Honorary Ambassador of GamFed, the International Gamification Confederation.
- Community building: Founder of Gamification Europe and co-host of the Health Points podcast.
- Academic and practical perspective: Teaching gamification at King’s College London, ESCP Europe, and the University of Brighton, alongside live client work.
- A track record of useful outcomes: Supporting organisations whose work has gone on to secure funding, strengthen engagement, and build more credible long-term behaviour change strategies.