DESIGN

A well-designed prize excites people and appeals to creativity and imagination.  The Skild team will work with you to think through and understand the goals of the prize, and the tactical decisions that need to be made before the prize can be launched.  

Some of the design considerations we’ll help you work through include:

• Refinement of the specific challenge that needs a solution
• Development of clear, measureable goals and objectives
• Creation of concrete rules and requirements for the competition
• Finalization of the competition timeline
• Identification of the likely contestant bases and setting targets for number of entries
• Scheduling of judging phases and development of criteria for judging
• Choosing a scoring methodology

At the end of the design process, you will have a comprehensive “game plan” for the competition, with documentation of all the major decisions made during this phase.  With this game plan in hand, you will be prepared to execute an effective, efficient prize and find your solution.

PRODUCE

With the goals and parameters defined, the Skild team will begin work to customize your prize platform to match.  A well-designed competition platform is essential to running a smooth and efficient prize.  We will make sure that once the prize starts, information flow between the competitors, the judges, and your organization will be fast and secure, and managing the dissemination of information to the general public will be easy.  The specific rules and guidelines will need to be nailed down early in this process so they can be posted as soon as possible – all of the potential competitors will want to know the rules of the game before they commit to playing!

Some of the specific tasks that will be done during the production phase include:

• Integration of the public website with the back-end platform
• Customizing the judging criteria and scorecard
• Form customization for easy communication from contestants and the public
• Content customization to ensure quality information and community engagement
• Branding and user interface design and implementation
• Server customization and configuration 

The production phase typically lasts less than 2 weeks, at the end of which you will have a fully developed competition platform ready to start generating solutions as soon as you’re ready.

PLAY

Ladies and gentlemen, let the games begin!  In the third and final stage, the competition is launched to the public.  Registration opens for teams and judges, both those whom we identified in the design and other newly interested participants, and the challenge questions are distributed.  With the technical and execution support of Skild people, submissions will flow in, all tracked by the system.  From day one, you will have access to a dashboard and reports documenting the status of the entire competition, eliminating many of the “black box” concerns that can exist within prizes.  This ensures that you maintain maximum control over the competition, and can make tweaks as necessary.

As soon as the submission window is closed, entries will be assigned by the system to the judges so that each judge has a similar number of entries to score.  Judges will be able to use the platform’s scorecard, ensuring consistency throughout the judging process.  Results will be automatically tallied, the lowest scoring submissions eliminated, and the entire process can begin again until the right solution has been found.  

Some of the tasks that will be handled by the Skild platform and team include:

• Monitoring prize process
• Interpreting reports
• Performing judging assignments
• Managing judging progress
• Exporting and delivering submissions in order of highest to lowest ranking or score
• Publishing judging comparison reports
• Judging feedback report

MEASURE

No project is complete without a detailed analysis of the ROI it netted.  After the prize administration is over, and a winning solution is chosen (or not), the Skild team will help you to measure and understand the results of the prize.  We will deliver detailed analytics on everything from the number and quality of the submissions that you received to the amount of public recognition that you received.  What’s more, we don’t just deliver numbers.  We help you understand the results, and make recommendations for how future prizes can be improved to generate better results for your organizations.

Some of the specific results that we will help you measure and understand include:

1. Efficiency of the prize: The number of submissions vs. the number of viable solutions
2. Reach of the prize: What percent of your target audience and beyond heard about your competition
3. Impact of the prize: How the generated solution(s) will match up against the goal of the competition
4. View of the prize: What the different attitudes your target audience had toward the prize
5. Engagement with the prize: How your target audience engaged with the prize, both in terms of submitting and general interest
6. Effectiveness of the prize: Did your competition achieve the results that you wanted or needed?