The short answer: a booth game works when it teaches one clear thing in a minute or two, lets people play on their own phone with no app, and puts the scores on a big screen so the room joins in. That's how we approached the Medical Waste Segregation Challenge, which we built and ran for Qatar's Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) at its medical waste management conference on 12 November 2026.
Conference booths compete for a few minutes of attention between sessions. A game earns those minutes if it's quick to start, easy to understand and fun to win. Here's what we built, how the day went, and what we'd tell anyone planning an activation.
The brief.
MoPH wanted conference visitors to remember how healthcare waste should be segregated: which container colour, which label and which hazard symbol go with each type of waste. The rules already existed on two MoPH posters. Our job was to turn them into something people would choose to play, without changing a word of the guidance.
That shaped the first rule of the build: every item, colour, label and rule in the games comes from those two posters, and nothing else.
What we built.
- Bin Rush: a medical waste item appears and players tap the right bin before the timer runs out, with lives, streaks and faster items as they go.
- Code Breaker: quick questions on container colours, label wording, hazard symbols and segregation rules, scored for accuracy and speed.
- Symbol Match: a card-flip game pairing hazard symbols and characteristics with their waste category.
- A booth kiosk with a leaderboard and a full-screen leaderboard for a second screen.
- Live multiplayer: the host starts a round, attendees scan a QR code and play the same round on their phones, and a big-screen leaderboard updates as they play.
- An admin panel to adjust timings, lives and question types, edit the content, and export scores as a CSV on the day.
On the day.
The games ran at the booth kiosk and in live rounds on the big screen. On the conference day, attendees joined live multiplayer rooms 35 times from their phones across 10 rooms. Kiosk scores stay on the booth device, so they're counted separately from the live rounds.
What we learned.
- Keep it short. A Bin Rush round lasts 60 seconds, so people can play between sessions and come back to beat their score.
- Let the client own the content. Building only from MoPH's posters means every answer matches the official guidance, and the admin panel lets the team adjust content without a developer.
- Phones beat queues. A QR code puts the game in everyone's hand at once, instead of one person at a time on a tablet.
- The leaderboard is the hook. Names on a big screen turn a quiz into a competition the whole room watches.
- Plan for the venue. The booth games kept scores on the kiosk itself, so they didn't depend on the venue network, while the live rounds ran through our server.
- Make the result useful afterwards. Scores export as a CSV, and the participation numbers come from the live game's own records.
Using the same approach at your event.
The format works well beyond health: product knowledge at a launch, safety rules for staff, brand trivia at a mall activation, or a sponsor challenge at a sports event. The ingredients stay the same: a short game built on your own content, phones as controllers, a live leaderboard, and consented sign-ups where you want leads.
Plan your activation with us.
Odysense designs, builds and runs games and live audience engagement for events in Qatar and the GCC. Read the full MoPH case study on our work page, try the demos on our gamification page, or book a free consultation and we'll suggest a format for your event with a fixed quote.