Research Through Gaming

I founded Research Through Gaming (RTG) in 2011.
I thought ‘online surveys are pretty boring, surely there’s a better way?’
I decided to capture what was so engaging about games, and use that in research.
The result has been 10 years of working on some exciting projects, with fantastic clients worldwide.

Check out this section to find out more about RTG, my services in this area, client and player testimonials, and more.

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Bestsellers

Games & Gamification in Market Research book

An industry-renowned text book, to be published in two additional languages

Serious Game &
Gamification Design
and
Development

Benefit from Betty Adamou’s 10+ years of Serious Game, Gamification and Interactive Media design experience.

Gamification
Masterclass Workshops

Click to discover Serious Game and
Gamification workshops for Training & Education, Marketing and Market Research. Workshops are suitable for professionals and students alike, and available virtually.

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Research
Through
Gaming

(inside: ResearchGames™, Marketing Games,
Training Games, InsightGames™, and more)

Keynotes,
university guest lectures,
and other public speaking

Column:
How Games are
Changing the World

(a column discussing
Serious Games and Gamification
in multiple industries, and unpacking ethics, design and impact)

Hire this brain

Get in touch. Email is always best:
hello[@]bettyadamou[.]com

Making Games for Research, Marketing, Training and Education.

Watch this video

Betty Adamou from Chore to Score Gamification Europe Keynote Berlin 2019

BBC Radio interview

Betty was invited on BBC Radio Suffolk (again!) to talk about her innovative work using Serious Games and Gamification to gather useful data, and increase user engagement.

BBC Radio Suffolk

Betty was invited on BBC Radio Suffolk (again!) to talk about her innovative work using Serious Games and Gamification to gather useful data, and increase user engagement.

Client feedback
(more testimonials can be found on the reviews page)

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Web Dan Bell Testimonial The Student Room for Betty RTG

Web Dr Phillipa May Testimonial HCS Conference for Betty RTG

Web Dr WIll Thomas Testimonial Uni of Suffolk for Betty RTG

Web Pete Jenkins Testimonial Gamification Europe for Betty RTG

Get in touch

Want Betty to design and create a Serious Game for your business?
Or would you like to learn from Betty Adamou’s expertise
through workshops, or webinars?
Get in touch for a rate card and a chat

bettyadamou

🎤 💃🏽💃🏼🎉 **Now live!** I’ve t

🎤 💃🏽💃🏼🎉

**Now live!**

I’ve teased about being on The Bento Club podcast and that the episode was dropping soon, and here it is!

👉🏼In this episode, I share a bit more about my personal life (*gulp*), why the @not.sorry.club was founded, and why it’s important that women stop saying sorry when they don’t need to.

The episode is titled “Why don’t women share or celebrate their successes?”.

In this interview, I give some insight into why this might be, and how there are similarities to this behaviour across different cultures.

I also talk about how the conscientiousness of women often means we forgo sharing our successes so others don’t feel uncomfortable; while there is certainly a thoughtfulness to this, and it is well-intentioned, it often means we betray ourselves and our sense of growth, and other people are denied being inspired by us when we withhold.

Would love to hear your thoughts 👇🏼

Any advice you’ve personally followed that helps you gain the confidence to share your achievements and actually celebrate them?
Would love to hear it!

🎧 Give the episode a listen on your fave podcast platform via: https://bit.ly/WomenCelebrating

#podcast #interview #thebentoclub #womensupportingwomen #womenstopics #impostersyndrome #notsorryclub

COMING UP IN THE SPOOKY SEASON (because how people

COMING UP IN THE SPOOKY SEASON (because how people are living to work IS scary!)

Coming up in October, I’ll be running my Gamification in Employee Engagement workshop masterclass, because no one should have to feel or live like this.

The workshop is taking place at the @museumofbrands - date and timings with ticket link to be announced soon!

👉🏽Find out more about my workshops and make an enquiry to be kept up-to-date on all my upcoming publicly open events by visiting in my website www.bettyadamou.com (link in bio 👆🏼) or even make an inquiry for your own private company workshop, or consultation session.

#EmployeeEngagement #jobsatisfaction #staffengagement #employeemotivation #Gamification

🤭*Something brewing!* 😊  🎤Next month, I

🤭*Something brewing!* 😊 
🎤Next month, I’ll be co-speaking with one of my Design Consultation Clients on stage at a healthcare research conference!

We’ll be talking about: 
a) the design approach and impact of #gamification, and improved #UX more broadly, in online #healthcareresearch. 
b) the results from two healthcare research studies that used gamification.  
(Name of conference org to be revealed soon!) 
Before announcing the organization, dates etc, I want to share 3 things about them/their team, and how much I love their collaborative spirit!

1) How proud I am of this client!

The client is a research agency, and like so many agencies, was concerned about lack of engagement and the data quality through online surveys.
Instead of doing the same things again, they decided to do something different.
They decided to collaborate.
They hired me for 1 hour of Design Consultation to begin with, to learn a bit more about gamification, share their challenges, and get some ideas.

This client was, like many of my clients, about to go into an unknown world. They hadn’t applied gamification before, but bravely experimented, and conquered a new horizon!

2) Their own client collaboration:

From seeing the benefits of Gamification in one survey, this client has continued to include gamification in their work on a needs-basis (which is how all gamification should be used) as part of their arsenal of research methodologies. In doing so, they collaborate with their own clients on gamification, and go through that important education stage.

3) Their collaboration with the wider community:  
Inviting me to co-speak with them at an upcoming conference is such a privilege and a collaboration in itself, but the fact that they place so much importance in sharing a methodology that has worked well for them to other members of their community, speaks volumes about their collaborative spirit.
They’re saying “this worked so well for us, we’d love to see others solve similar engagement and data quality issues in their research!”

Very excited to share the client and the conference with dates in due course 💖

😊 Saw this post on Linked In from one of my Wo

😊
Saw this post on Linked In from one of my Workshop Masterclass clients, QVC, and am delighted that they’ve put some of the learning into action to create interactive Marketing!

It’s great to see a client apply some inspiration to make their marketing endeavours even more engaging!

I was hired by Anna Kersey Daly to join the QVC team for an afternoon, delivering my bestselling workshop masterclass ‘Gamification in Marketing and Advertising’.
It’s great to see they’ve created an Easter Egg Hunt competition in which customers must engage online to follow to the clues, to reveal a secret word for the win. This is just one of (I’m sure, many!) new marketing endeavours!

Well done Anna and the QVC team! 👊

This is an approach that demands a two-way interaction, in a way most traditional marketing doesn’t (which is normally a one-way message).

Wishing Anna and the @qvcuk team lots of high customer engagement, traction, and conversions!
🏆💸🏆💸🏆💸

#Clientproject #gamification #AdverGame #MarketingGame #gamify #playmatters #playfulmarketing #brandexperiences

✍🏽👶 Your help needed! QUESTION FOR MUMS:

✍🏽👶
Your help needed!
QUESTION FOR MUMS:

Reaching out to my community of women career-pivoters, budding entrepreneurs, and existing freelancers who have children under the age of 2 (or, your children are older now but you recall with detail what it was like having children under the age of 2!).

🤔I want you to imagine that you’re going on a course; maybe it’s a one-off workshop, or a series of classes across a number of weeks.
Perhaps you’re back from maternity leave and want to upskill in a new way, or perhaps you want to start your own business and have a new baby in tow.

How important would it be for you to be able to bring along your young babe?

a) Would it feel like a lifeline, and embraced?
b) Or, would you actually prefer a ‘no children policy’ when partaking on an in-person course?

Would very much love to read your thoughts on this! 👇🏼

(Image via Unsplash)

💗
#flexappeal #careerchange #womenwhowork #backtowork #maternityleave #femalefounders #womensupportingwomen #newmum #workingmum #femaleentrepreneur #femtrepreneur

🌈 Today marks my last day (teaching, there’l

🌈

Today marks my last day (teaching, there’ll be marking) as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Winchester.
I’ve had the privilege of teaching on a BA course and an MA course.

The MA in Freelancing and Entrepreneurship course in particular has felt like a growing journey with the students - which is exactly what it was meant to be like!
From designing elements of the course itself with fabulous colleagues, through to teaching, practical assignments and 1-2-1 sessions, it’s been a genuine pleasure to see such bright and entrepreneurial students develop client pitches, Dragons Den Style presentations, their own Rate Cards, think about their ideal clients, find local networking events, and more.

Wishing those brilliant students every ounce of success, good luck, and great cashflow!
Make it rain 🌧️ but most importantly, ENJOY THE JOURNEY X

💗#teaching #freelance #entrepreneur #entrepreneurship

**Writing and Design throwback** ✍🏼 🎨 So

Instagram is great - they’ve put together a litt

Instagram is great - they’ve put together a little reel of some of the press moments over the last few years 💗

🎤 📻 What a lovely way to spend Friday morn

🎤 📻

What a lovely way to spend Friday morning 🙂

🌈Massive thanks to @GiuliaRomanò at Field Notes for interviewing me this morning on The Bento Club podcast. 🎙️

For a change, I did not talk about Gamification (ok I did a little, but only in relation to how motivation works), instead I spoke about how I’d love to see women share and celebrate their successes more, and live unapologetically.
I also spoke about the @not.sorry.club, our 1 week #NotSorryChallenge, and the #ImportanceOfCelebration workshop that I host.

🤩Massive thanks to Giulia for making me so comfortable to share so vulnerably this morning, and sharing my personal story(ies), especially after a long week and feeling pretty sleepy to start with!
Our chat woke me right up and we had some fun taking pics at the end of the recording 🙂

🎤The Bento Club podcast is relatively new, and has some great speakers lined up, so access it here and be sure to bookmark it!

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-bento-club/id1727723927

🏷️
#TheBentoClubpodcast #marketresearchpodcasts #NotSorryClub #CelebrateSuccess #IWD #FieldNotes #Interview #StopApologizing #womensupportingwomen

🥳 Feeling proud 💗 We’re a few weeks away

🥳

Feeling proud 💗

We’re a few weeks away from Q1, and this year has already been full of glimmers and moments to be grateful for.

And this ease of things, work-wise and personally, doesn’t happen overnight.
It truly is the result of years of investing in myself and working smart AND hard in order to get here.

So far this year, I’m so happy that…

🥳I’ve got to run my Importance of Celebration event , under my @not.sorry.club umbrella, last week for #IWD, and will be running the event again next week

🌈To continue running Gamification workshops with the amazing @museumofbrands and my ither workshops with fantastic places like @blackheathconservatoire and the Market Research Society

🃏To continue working with lovely new clients and repeat clients, designing gamification approaches and systems

🌈To be a Visiting Lecturer on an MA course on Entrepreneurship and Freelancing at @uniwinchester “, as well as a BA course on Social Media - it’s been amazing to share what I’ve learned! (The good and what to avoid!)

🤩To also be a Guest/Visiting Lecturer at other universities like @sunderlandunilondon and @universityofeastlondon

✍🏼To continue to have opportunities to write about my work, and speak on the conference stage (conference news coming up soon!)

I shared in my recent Importance of Celebration event that I am successful. What success means to us is deeply personal.
To me, being successful is about saying “I’m happy with my life, and yet, look at all the ways I can grow and go next!”

It means being able to pay the bills, do work I love, have good relationships around me, and the opportunity to meet fab and inspiring people (like Kate Sida-Nicholls from @universitystudieswsc pictured with me here at the XR LAB in Suffolk!)

Thanks for indulging me in this moment of reflection, and I hope if any of my MA students are reading this, you’ll know that being an entrepreneur isn’t always easy, but when you can make it work in YOUR WAY, the rewards are amazing 🌈🌈🤩🤩

🥳🎉🙌👏🎊 The Importance of Celebratio

🥳🎉🙌👏🎊

The Importance of Celebration event is, I won’t lie, an emotional one. We dig deep and reflect on why we don’t celebrate enough, and sometimes identifying those causes from our childhoods brings up painful or uncomfortable memories. BUT…

Every time we can identify where a habit comes from, we then have the power to face it and change it, because NOT sharing our achievements, much less celebrating them, OS A HABIT.

I’m so glad that in these events, the women I speak to feel comfortable to share their own stories and join in the celebrations. An every like this only works when everyone in the room is willing to be vulnerable, and is ready for change.

Thank you so much to the Eastern Education Group @universitystudieswsc in #Suffolk for marking #IWD on Friday with my #ImportanceOfCelebration event.

It’s such a pleasure for me to run these events, and hope that each attendee genuinely starts celebrating their next milestones!

💗

#CelebrateSuccess #internationalwomensday

PART 3: One of the worst things we can do in hear

PART 3:

One of the worst things we can do in hearing about someone’s successes is to ignore them, or react badly. Often, that kind of reaction is about that persons own feelings of inadequacy and nothing to do with the person sharing their achievement.

But, let’s say you do want to hear from your friend/colleague/family about their achievement but you’re currently busy or not in the best mood. Can you simply articulate that?

Can you let that person know that you really do want to listen, but can you reconnect another time?

I have women attending my Importance of Celebration event from multiple ethnic backgrounds, or differing ages, and of differing ‘ranks’ in the workplace - yet no matter how intelligent or hard-working these women are, ALL of them, yes 100% of them, share that NOT talking about or celebrating their successes stems from something in childhood.

Here are just a few things I’ve heard:

- Sharing my achievements would have upset my sibling
- unless the grade was an A*, it wasn’t worth talking about (and even then, the top grades were expected)
- sharing my achievements made my friends act aggressively toward me
- I was taught as a girl not to show off
- sharing my achievements would have caused bullying at school (being called a nerd, geek etc - using negative tone).
- when i shared my achievements, I was mostly ignored
- I stop sharing my achievements after my parents got upset with me that I wasn’t helping my sibling get the same sort of results

Can we please just stop this nonsense?
Can we please start celebrating the women around us, and if we can’t in that time and place, come back to them later with a listening ear and kindness?

And if you have a larger problem celebrating other people’s achievements, it could be a good prompt to reflect on what feels missing in your own life, and see if you can approach yourself with curiosity and kindness (before being tempted to give a negative response to someone else).

If you’re interested in reading or listening more about some of the patterns I’ve noticed when running my Importance of Celebration event, let me know, as I’m thinking I writing another article at some point!

💗

PART 2: my audience observations while running my

PART 2: my audience observations while running my Importancr of Celebration events.

In this second video, I share the kinds of negative feedback we might have heard as young girls, which fuels why we don’t talk about or celebrate our successes as adults.

Next video tasks EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US to park our sh*t and be present when someone is telling you something good in their life.

You might be busy or in a bad mood, but even at these times, you can still communicate that you want to learn more/hear more but can the conversation happen later?

There is no excuse for being unkind when someone, no matter their age, is sharing their achievement with you.

Women celebrating women might not always feel easy and it might not come naturally to some, but we’ve got to try. We have a hard time enough without cutting each other down, after all 💗

PART 1: I’ve run about 9 or 10 of my Importance

PART 1:

I’ve run about 9 or 10 of my Importance of Celebration workshops now, both for private companies (where all the attendees work under the same company) or more publicly where the attendees are from multiple workplaces.

Here are a few short videos (Parts 1,2 and 3) recapping just two of the patterns that have emerged from running these events:

PATTERN 1: there will always be at least one woman in the room who doesn’t feel like she has anything worth celebrating, because she doesn’t feel like she has done/achieved anything. The reality is that we ALL achieve. We all, at some point, push ourselves out of our comfort zones to leave toxic situations, or go for new goals. These things require reflection, bravery, resilience, and ambition.

They are things to be celebrated.
And usually, the person in the room who doesn’t feel like they’ve ’done much’ usually ends up having a list of lots of achievements by the end of the session!

PATTERN 2: The reason that women don’t celebrate our achievements usually stems from a negative childhood experience. Perhaps we shared an achievement with a family member or friend and didn’t get the reaction we hoped; maybe we were outright ignored. Maybe our achievement even prompted someone else to mock us, bully us, be passive aggressive, or hurt us in some other way.

This behaviour not only tarnishes the sense we have of our achievement, but then in NOTHING sharing our achievement later on, we’re actually in CONFLICT-AVOIDANCE mode. We associate that my achievement = upset for me and other people. So we keep it to ourselves. We shrink ourselves to fit with other peoples moods and behaviours.

My next video shared a bit more on this…

I may do a proper write up about all the patterns I’ve started to notice over the years if me running this event, but for now, please watch the next reel on this 💗

Do these patterns resonate with you? to think about, but I promise that an awareness of where our ‘shrinking’ comes from is the first step in doing something positive to change the narrative 💗

#importanceofcelebration #IWD #celebratesuccess #celebration #womenempowerment #womensupportingwomen

*NEXT PUBLIC EVENT* 🌳Are you a brand that what

📖 Last year, I ran my Importance of Celebratio

📖

Last year, I ran my Importance of Celebration event in London with a group of badass female scientific staff as part of the NHS.
They were a group of brilliant minds, all with Masters Degrees and other amazing qualifications, but it struck me (as it often does when I run this event) how no matter the levels of qualifications we have, our salaries, our hierarchy in the workplace, or if we have letters after our name or not, ALL THE WOMEN I MEET shrink themselves and their achievements in some way.

They say it was luck. It wasn’t as good as someone else’s achievement or as worthy. It was a fluke. Or it isn’t even important.
We MUST change the narrative for our own emotional healthy, and for the next generation of women growing up behind us 👊🏽

These feelings inspired an article I wrote, available on @medium, and can be accessed here:
bit.ly/CelebrateWomenPlease

(link also in bio 👆🏼 and highlights).

As this is the weekend right after #IW, I hope you enjoy this read and find it insightful 💗

#weekendreading #IWD #IWD2024 #celebratewomen #celebratesuccess #article #internationalwomensday #celebratelife #celebrateyourself #celebrateeachother

At the @suffolkone XR lab! This is where they’re

At the @suffolkone XR lab! This is where they’re putting me to run my Importance of Celebration event, and could not be more thrilled!

Look at this place! So modern and cool - feel like I’m about to do an iPhone announcement 👀

💗#IWD @universitystudieswsc

🎤 🥳 🍾 This Friday, on #InternationalWom

🎤 🥳 🍾

This Friday, on #InternationalWomensDay, I’ll be running a seminar to help women stop living apologetically and START CELEBRATING SUCCESS!

👉🏽The Importance of Celebration is a 2 hour seminar which starts off with a personal story from me, with a few chuckles thrown in, and over to the audience for a change to reflect on previous achievements, and how we’re going to create some accountability for acknowledging success in the future.

Not only is celebrating success important to our sense of achievement, but it also…

💡 Inspires those around us

💪🏼Motivates us to do EVEN MORE in the future, and…

🪩Gives us a chance to reflect on the journey, and what it all took for you to get there, building more confidence and resilience.

So come along this FRIDAY 8th MARCH in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk from 4pm -7pm, and also have an opportunity to network with like-minded women.

Tickets available online via @eventbrite and you can use this short link for ease: bit.ly/EEGcelebrateIWD

🤔Wondering if it’s worth coming? Swipe to see just a few of the lovely comments I’ve received from running this event, from attendees and organisers alike!

💗See you there!

*This seminar has been hired by the Eastern Education Group for women in the Suffolk community and beyond. With huge thanks to their team for making this happen!*

💥🔥💗🤩

#internationalwomensday #IWD2024 #womenofsuffolk #suffolkbusiness #suffolkcounty #womenempowerment @universitystudieswsc

☄️ Aw throwback to the @gamificationeurope co

☄️

Aw throwback to the @gamificationeurope conference last October!
Can’t believe it’s been 6 months since we were in Utrecht!

💗Being part of the team to run this event as Community Chair had its stresses (choices choices for speaker content! There was so many good synopses!) but it was SO MUCH FUN and I met so many talented #gamification designers, thinkers, students and DOERS.

🤝What’s great is that since the conference, so many of the speakers and attendees have continued to talk and share, including the lovely @n.icoluh @i.gluski @lavinia46203 @diegoitapira and others 💗

There’s things that come up in life that are unexpected, and the Gamification Europe Conference Community Chair role was definitely one of those unexpected things at the time, but so welcome it was, and amazing memories created.
You CAN love your job!

💗

#GamificationEurope #Gamify #GamificationCommunity #GamificationDesigner #Gamify #SeriousGames

👩‍🏫 Teaching the next generation about th

👩‍🏫

Teaching the next generation about that Hustler Mentality this afternoon at @uniwinchester for the MA in Freelancing & Entrepreneurshio course!

Going through rate cards, networking, collaborations, public speaking, proposal prep and delivery, and lots more!

Lovely to share the ‘what not to do’ things as well as the protips to help young adults so they can enjoy being solopreneurs as much as possible! It’s all about emotional health, joy in work, as well as the cold hard cash! 💰 💰 💰

🔥🔥🔥

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