Leading Product Innovation
Across Five Game Concepts.
As Product Innovation Specialist and Head of Design, I helped VDL move from scattered entertainment ideas into a structured game pipeline — creating 5 new game concepts and improving 3+ existing game experiences across VDL's portfolio, defining player motivations, engagement loops, reward systems, and design direction for each.
A gaming company building beyond a single product.
VDL needed new entertainment ideas to expand its creative and business direction — each with its own mechanic, motivation, and reason to exist.
The innovation pipeline.
A repeatable model for moving from a loose idea to a production-ready game — applied to all five concepts.
Spot the gap
Identify a market/audience gap or behavioral opportunity.
Define the idea
Define what the product is and why it should exist.
Define the why
Define why players would care and return.
Define the loop
Define what players repeatedly do.
Define the incentives
Define lives, points, coins, wallets, prizes, or unlocks.
Define the feel
Define how the game should feel and how screens support the loop.
Guide the build
Guide the design team through flows, screens, and reviews.
Hand it off
Prepare the concept and designs for development.
How do you turn entertainment ideas into product opportunities?
The challenge was not simply to design screens — it was turning loose entertainment ideas into structured game concepts.
Anyone can suggest "a trivia game" or "a fan challenge." The harder questions: why would a player open it twice, what emotion must it deliver, how does it differ from the company's other products, and how does a design team turn that into something a developer can build? That gap — between idea and product direction — was the actual job.
Invention, strategy, and design leadership.
My role moved between hands-on product design and design leadership: I personally designed the EduMillionaire mobile application and directed product and design across the other four game products.
Product Innovation
Explored opportunities and shaped new game ideas around engagement, competition, and rewards.
Game Concept Development
I defined how each game should work, what made it different, and how players would understand the value.
Experience Direction
Shaped how each product should feel — playful, competitive, rewarding, or learning-driven.
Design Leadership
Led the design team through concept translation, visual direction, and execution alignment.
What I personally owned.
Hands-on product design
Designed the EduMillionaire mobile app — UX flow, interface direction, and player journey
Translated the STEAM trivia model into a mobile-first gameplay experience
Product innovation and design leadership
Conceived game concepts and defined player motivation for each
Wrote and structured product direction and case-study thinking
Guided experience direction and supervised design execution across the other four games
Led design reviews and team alignment
Helped translate concepts into production-ready direction
EduMillionaire: direct design ownership. The other four: innovation, direction, and supervision rather than sole screen execution.
How I evaluated which game ideas were worth building.
A product-opportunity assessment weighing audience fit, repeat-play potential, and build complexity before committing design time.
| Product | Audience Opportunity | Repeat-Play Potential | Differentiation | Reward / Economy Fit | Production Complexity | Strategic Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EduMillionaire | Students wanting STEAM learning that feels engaging | Avatars, power-ups, weekly leaderboard | STEAM trivia with identity-based avatars | Lives, power-ups, wallet, weekly prizes | Medium–high (avatars, categories, wallet) | Edutainment product |
| Cash Rush | Young adults needing financial literacy through competition | Timed trivia, lives, power-ups, leaderboard | Financial literacy as competitive gameplay | Weekly cash pool, lives, power-ups | Medium (question bank, wallet, leaderboard) | Financial education + reward gaming |
| MindQuest | Wellness-curious users resistant to clinical tone | Daily challenges, lives, rewards, leaderboard | Wellness education made playful, approachable | Wellness rewards, free trial, subscription | Medium (tone, sensitivity, content accuracy) | Wellness-focused engagement product |
| Fifty-Fifty | Players drawn to African culture, history, identity | Map progression, daily limits, Quick Challenge | History/culture trivia via geography progression | Lives, wallet, weekly cash leaderboard | High (map, zones, wallet, payouts) | Culturally relevant, live-market product |
| Rep Your Club | Football fans driven by club identity and rivalry | Formation board, coins, weekly challenges | Trivia combined with collection and formation building | Coins, lives, wallet, player unlocks | High (clubs, pricing, formation, unlocks) | Fan loyalty turned into repeat gameplay |
EduMillionaire
Cash Rush
MindQuest
Fifty-Fifty
Rep Your Club
Five games, one pipeline.
| Product | Player Motivation | Core Loop | Reward System | My Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EduMillionaire | Learning, STEAM mastery, rewards | Category → avatar → timed Qs → power-ups → leaderboard | Lives, wallet, avatar unlocks, weekly rewards | Designed the app; shaped concept & UX |
| Cash Rush | Financial confidence, competition | Finance category → timed Qs → power-ups → leaderboard | Lives, power-ups, ₦100k weekly prize pool | Shaped concept & reward loop; supervised design |
| MindQuest | Wellness knowledge, self-improvement | Category → trivia → power-ups → daily challenge → leaderboard | Lives, subscription, wellness vouchers | Shaped concept & habit loop; supervised design |
| Fifty-Fifty | Cultural pride, discovery | Zone select → trivia → 50/50 power-up → leaderboard → unlock map | Lives, wallet+PIN, cash leaderboard rewards | Shaped concept & map progression; led design |
| Rep Your Club | Club pride, rivalry | League/club → trivia → coins → unlock players → leaderboard | Lives, wallet, player/legend unlocks | Shaped concept & formation mechanic; supervised design |
EduMillionaire
Cash Rush
MindQuest
Fifty-Fifty
Rep Your Club
Why these five games exist.
Five products, five engagement models.
Real screens from each game's design file — none of them compete for the same emotional space.
A STEAM trivia game designed around learning, avatars, power-ups, wallet rewards, and competitive progression.
A financial literacy trivia game that turns money knowledge into weekly competitive play.
A wellness trivia experience designed to make mental health learning feel approachable, rewarding, and habit-forming.
An African history and culture trivia game built around map progression, zone challenges, power-ups, and leaderboard rewards.
A football trivia game where fans unlock players, build club formations, and compete through loyalty-driven progression.
The mechanics behind each loop.
The first-time hook, return mechanic, and risk each concept had to manage.
| Product | First-Time Hook | Return Mechanic | Progression System | Reward System | Monetization / Economy | Main Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EduMillionaire | Play STEAM trivia with avatars and category identity | Weekly challenges, leaderboard, rewards | Subjects, avatars, levels, power-ups | Wallet, prizes, leaderboard | Lives, power-ups, wallet | Balancing education with entertainment |
| Cash Rush | Earn through financial knowledge | Weekly cash pool and leaderboard | Finance categories, streaks, power-ups | Cash prizes, points, lives | Extra lives and power-ups | Avoiding gambling perception while keeping rewards exciting |
| MindQuest | Wellness learning made light and playful | Daily challenges and wellness rewards | Wellness categories and challenges | Wellness-focused rewards | Free trial, lives/subscription | Keeping mental health content responsible, not trivialized |
| Fifty-Fifty | Represent African knowledge through map progression | Daily limits, Quick Challenge, leaderboard | Map, countries, zones, unlocks | Weekly cash prizes, points, 50/50 power-up | Lives, wallet, payout flow | Keeping competition skill-based and culturally accurate |
| Rep Your Club | Represent your club and unlock players | Formation building, coins, weekly challenges | Club unlocks, player/legend collection | Coins, leaderboard, rewards | Lives, wallet, paid life packs | Balancing fandom, collection, and trivia difficulty |
EduMillionaire
Cash Rush
MindQuest
Fifty-Fifty
Rep Your Club
The engagement loop behind every game.
The same underlying loop, re-skinned five ways for each game's audience.
Key trade-offs behind the product direction.
Skill-based rewards, not gambling mechanics
Why: Target users are drawn to betting-like reward systems, but the products needed to stay knowledge-based and fair.
Applied to: Cash Rush, Rep Your Club, Fifty-Fifty
Decision: Use trivia, leaderboards, lives, and transparent rewards rather than luck-based outcomes.
Free play before sign-up
Why: Asking users to register too early can reduce adoption.
Applied to: Fifty-Fifty, MindQuest, Rep Your Club
Decision: Allow limited play first, then trigger sign-up once users understand the value.
Lives economy over aggressive subscriptions
Why: Daily subscriptions can feel tiring or extractive.
Applied to: EduMillionaire, Fifty-Fifty, Cash Rush, Rep Your Club
Decision: Use lives and wallet-based purchases so monetization stays tied to continued play.
Category identity as a product mechanic
Why: Categories make trivia feel personal and structured rather than generic.
Applied to: All five games
Decision: Use STEAM subjects, finance topics, wellness domains, geopolitical zones, or football clubs to make choice meaningful.
Leaderboards with safeguards
Why: Reward leaderboards create motivation but also risk unfairness.
Applied to: All five games
Decision: Use wallet/PIN flows, verification, eligibility rules, and progression limits to protect trust.
Leading design without owning every pixel.
As Head of Design, my job was to make each product concept a clear, usable, emotionally distinct experience — guiding the team from concept interpretation through visual direction and execution.
For the other four games, I translated product concepts into visual direction, reviewed UX decisions, and made sure each preserved its intended player motivation.
Translating product concepts into design direction
Guiding visual tone across each game's identity
Reviewing experience quality against the original concept
Ensuring design served the product mechanic, not the other way around
How a concept became production-ready direction.
Rep Your Club flow map used to align gameplay structure, onboarding, league selection, subscription logic, and progression before screen execution.
How the work shaped the company's direction.
Created a Repeatable Innovation Pipeline
Turned five product ideas into structured game concepts with audience, motivation, loop, economy, and design direction.
Expanded VDL's Product Portfolio
Helped VDL move beyond one-off entertainment ideas into a broader portfolio across education, finance, wellness, culture, and sports.
Improved Product Clarity for Execution
Converted PRD-level ideas into clearer flows, screens, mechanics, and design decisions that teams could execute.
Connected Game Design to Business Opportunity
Each game was shaped around a business-relevant motivation: learning, money confidence, wellness, cultural identity, or football loyalty.
Supported Production Readiness
Prepared product concepts, flows, screens, and experience logic for development and launch planning.
What I would measure next.
Because several products are still in production, the strongest next step is measuring whether the designed loops actually drive activation, repeat play, and healthy economy behavior.
Activation
First game started after landing.
Onboarding Completion
Sign-up, avatar/category/club selection.
First-Session Completion
Players who complete their first challenge.
Return Rate
Day 1 / Day 7 return behavior.
Economy Balance
Life purchases, wallet funding, power-up usage.
Reward Health
Prize claims and leaderboard participation.
Content Quality
Question accuracy, difficulty balance, drop-off points.
Retention Loop
Repeat play by category, challenge, or club.
Referral / Social
Sharing, competition invites, community behavior.
What this taught me about innovation leadership.
Innovation is not just having ideas: the real work is giving a concept mechanics and business logic strong enough to build against.
Hands-on design and design leadership feel different: one demands deep UX execution, the other demands giving designers enough clarity to execute without losing the concept.
Different games need different motivations: A learning game and a fan challenge can't share the same emotional playbook — each needed its own logic for why a player returns.
A strong concept has to be instantly understandable: If a player can't explain what the game is in one sentence, the concept isn't finished — no matter how polished the screens look.
Explore the live product.
Fifty-Fifty is currently available while the remaining game concepts continue through production.
Interested in how I approach product work?
Book a 20-min intro call, or send the role details by email.
