It’s not the Game, It’s the Play: Rebuilding Humanness in Learning Design

It was my first week on the job, and I was invited to a celebratory team meeting. 95% of the company’s learners (20K+) had just completed their “Green Belt”. They’d added their badge to their work profile and printed their certificate for their desk. In the room, there was champagne, cute little gourmet cupcakes, lots of applause, and speeches of gratitude to the team who had created the training.

As a newbie and new to corporate learning and development at this scale (sitting on the floor in the corner as the room was so full), I was really taken back.

I had just come from the business side of the company. Yep, the folks who had to undertake this training. And there, I knew that most people waited until the last week of the quarter, as it was a mandated part of their quarterly performance. The best (worst) part … teams, friends, and random groups were sitting in rooms together ‘taking the training,’ sharing the answers, trying to just get it done as fast as possible. The badges, while I am sure there was a subset that felt proud, were mostly posted to appease leadership.

Don’t get me wrong, getting 20,000 people to do anything is a major feat. But it was hard to see this as real learning. Fast forward to today, this isn’t new. It’s everywhere, and certainly in corporate learning. Well-intentioned ideas and efforts with major unintended consequences.

The training was trading clicks, points, levels, badges and completion metrics for genuine engagement, connection and, most of all, real learning.

Somewhere along the way, we forgot to make sure the humans are at the heart of what we are doing.

What does this actually mean, neurologically speaking? More than you’d think — and it’s measurable.
Before our human brain can access curiosity, creativity, or real learning, it first has to register that the room, the call, or the screen in front of it is safe. So whether you’re designing a live session or a self-paced course, the question underneath is the same: what, specifically, is telling this person’s nervous system it’s safe to get this wrong, to make a mistake? And even if it was safe, was there intrinsic motivation — a genuine desire to learn, not just to finish?


We know safety and intrinsic motivation are key to true learning and retention, and yet, the temptation of gimmicks to get to completion is real. In one study, a few minutes of real humour before a stressful task lowered people’s cortisol — their stress hormone — without costing them any speed or accuracy afterwards.


I get it.


Points, leaderboards and a host of other mechanics can be playful; of course, they can feel like a game, which people generally enjoy. It’s an easy go-to for training teams; it feels ‘funner’ than your standard (often boring) training, incorporates some kind of measurable engagement and can show accountability, WIN! Well, in theory.


I was in the rooms where we talked about having levels, creating exclusivity. We even said, ‘yes, let’s have leaderboards – it will create friendly competition and some accountability’.


No matter how ‘fun’ the rest of training is, being at the bottom of a leaderboard your boss can see doesn’t feel fun or safe.


I want to introduce a broader and richer definition of play in learning, one that extends beyond countdown timers and extrinsic rewards. One that feels more human and is not a distraction from learning but one that creates the conditions for it.


Decades of research describe playfulness as a genuine psychological state, as real and mappable as the safety and desire-to-engage we just talked about. Researcher Nina Lieberman mapped it across five distinct dimensions.


I use an adapted version of her framework — I call it SMILE — to turn “safety plus intrinsic motivation” into something you can actually design for, not just hope for.


S — Social Connection: Building bridges through shared experience, genuine interaction, and moments where people feel safe enough to connect and contribute.


M — Movement: Using physical energy and active participation to shift people out of autopilot and into greater attention, connection, and momentum — whether that’s kicking a ball, walking the room, or writing with your opposite hand. Prompts you can still offer in a digital space.


I — Intellectual Spontaneity: Creating space for curiosity, experimentation, flexible thinking, and “yes, and” moments that help people respond to change with more creativity and openness.


L — Levity: Using warmth, humour, and lightness to lower defensiveness, ease tension, and create the psychological safety needed for honest contribution.


E — Elation: Tapping into joy, meaning, and intrinsic motivation so people feel more energised, engaged, and invested in the work they are doing.



Play is so fundamental to how brains work, it survives even when the “sophisticated” thinking parts don’t. It’s wired in at the same primal level as fear itself. Not an extra. A foundation.


Genuine, authentic playfulness, whether it comes from a leader in a boardroom, a facilitator at the front of the room or on a screen in a learning management system, disarms our threat centre. It tells our brain we are safe. This is a place where we can learn, grow, and experiment.


So what does this mean for your existing programs? Don’t worry, they don’t need to be tossed into the proverbial bin.

1. Repurpose that leaderboard for connection: Take the leaderboard or performance dashboard you already built. Instead of broadcasting who’s ahead and who’s behind, use that same data to pair people up. Put two learners at different stages together and give them two minutes to compare what tripped them up. Two chairs pulled together in a live room, or two names dropped into a breakout thread in an LMS: same mechanic, same data, but comparison becomes connection instead of ranking.
   
   
2. Get them moving: Yes, even in digital training. Ask learners to find an object within arm’s reach that represents the biggest obstacle their clients raise, and hold it up to the camera or describe it in the chat before you continue. Thirty seconds, out of the chair, and it forces metaphor instead of multiple choice. In a live room, the same instinct scales up — ask people to physically move to one side of the room or the other based on where they land on a question, instead of just raising a hand.
   
   
3. Bring in intentional lightness: Place one genuine, specific moment of levity right before the hardest part of the session: the tricky question, the roleplay, the assessment. A facilitator’s quick, true story about their own worst attempt at exactly the thing people are about to try. Not a stock joke. A real one.

Again, none of this means tossing out what you’ve already built or thinking that badges, levels, rewards are inherently wrong. They can serve a purpose. But what it does mean is asking harder questions of it, being honest that playfulness done without real thought can curdle into its own kind of performance, the same manipulation dressed up differently. A little goes a long way. Knowing your audience matters more than knowing the mechanics.


Saying it again here so it sticks: somewhere along the way, we forgot to put the humans back at the heart of the room. It’s about designing for the conditions that let people actually show up.


I’ll be unpacking the full five dimensions of play, the neuroscience behind them, and a practical toolkit for building this into your own facilitation and design at my OEB Berlin session, Adapting a Playful Mindset, on Dec 3rd.

Written by Kelsey Kates for OEB 2026.