FUNMERSIVE – Co-Innovation Project
From Fun to Measurable Competitive Advantage: Immersive and Engaging Customer Experiences in Services
Description: The FUNMERSIVE research project examines how fun can be utilized in service design, learning solutions, and digital services in ways that strengthen customer and user engagement while supporting companies’ competitiveness and international growth. The project is based on the observation that, in today’s digital attention economy, many services rely on fast and superficial attention-capturing mechanisms, even though sustainable business requires solutions that foster long-term motivation, meaningfulness, and attachment to services. FUNMERSIVE approaches fun as a phenomenon that goes beyond entertainment: as an experiential, action-oriented, and measurable factor that can create added value for both users and service providers.
The project investigates how fun is built across different stages of the customer journey, from first contact to onboarding, active use, and long-term engagement. Its aim is to produce research-based models, measurement tools, and design principles that help companies develop services that are not only attractive but also functionally effective. Particular attention is given to how playfulness, gamification, immersion, and generative AI can support learning, motivation, user experience, and the sustainability of customer relationships across different sectors.
FUNMERSIVE is carried out as a consortium project involving the University of Turku, the University of Jyväskylä, and five corporate partners. During the project, the participating companies—MinnaLearn, LeanLab, Eduten, Seppo, and Rockway—will explore and develop new solutions related to, among other things, digital learning, gamified services, coaching, SaaS business, and user participation. The research combines expertise from business studies, educational sciences, game and gamification research, psychology, and user experience research, and applies a multi-method approach that includes surveys, interviews, observation, experimental interventions, and measurement development.
The project will generate new scientific knowledge on the relationships between fun, engagement, and service experience, as well as practical tools for fun-driven service design and business development. Its goal is to help companies transform fun from a difficult-to-define quality factor into a designable, measurable, and strategically exploitable source of competitive advantage.
Duration: February 1, 2026 – July 31, 2028
Funding: Business Finland, Co-Innovation Funding
