Behind the Build: Mighty Wrapped 2025 in Rise

Mighty Wrapped 2025 started with a simple challenge: how do you make a Rise course feel like an end-of-year experience, not a slide-by-slide recap? Here’s how our team built it using Articulate Rise, Mighty, a handful of smart snippets, and a lot of intentional layout work.

Behind the Build: How We Made Mighty Wrapped 2025 in Articulate Rise

This was a true team build. Brianna, Kendra, and Amy contributed to the design and development, Jillian created the copy and storyboard, and the finished course reflects a year of ideas, requests, meetups, experiments, and community feedback around Mighty.

The concept: a wrapped-style recap, built in Rise#

The idea was inspired by the end-of-year “wrapped” experiences we all know: visual, punchy, a little celebratory, and driven by stats. But the course still had to work inside Rise, which means designing within a block-based authoring environment rather than a completely custom web page.

That constraint shaped the build in a good way. Instead of trying to force Rise to behave like something else, the team mixed three ingredients:

• Native Rise blocks, like flip cards, process blocks, quote blocks, image and text layouts, and two-column grids
• Mighty design controls for typography, spacing, backgrounds, and block styling
• Mighty code snippets for a few moments that needed a more custom interaction

The result is still recognizably a Rise course—but with more motion, polish, and personality than you’d typically expect from a standard block stack.

1. Start with typography that sets the tone#

The opening screen leans heavily on typography. That was built using the rich text editor inside Mighty, which gave the team more control over the look and feel of the text than standard Rise formatting alone.

This matters because a “wrapped” experience needs to feel editorial. The opening text has to carry more weight than a normal lesson introduction. It’s not just explaining what’s coming next; it’s setting the rhythm for the whole course.

A practical takeaway for your own builds: if a course has a campaign, launch, or story-driven feel, treat the first text block like a title treatment—not just a heading. Use typography intentionally before you add extra media or interactions.

2. Use an animated GIF as a moving background#

The gradient-style motion in the opening section wasn’t a complex animation build. It was an animated GIF added as the image background.

That’s a nice reminder: not every polished effect needs to be engineered from scratch. A well-made animated GIF can add movement while keeping the Rise build manageable.

The key is restraint. Background motion should support the content, not compete with it. In this case, the animation gives the opening a little energy without asking the learner to do anything yet.

3. Add a floating button as an Easter egg#

One of the more playful details in Mighty Wrapped is the floating button that stays with you as you scroll. It links to a Spotify playlist—a nod to the Spotify Wrapped inspiration behind the course.

The playlist includes music that helped the team get through creating Mighty over the year. It’s a small detail, but it makes the course feel more human. You’re not just reading product stats; you’re getting a peek at the people behind the work.

For L&D projects, this kind of touch can work well when the course is meant to build connection: onboarding, culture, annual recaps, team retrospectives, or internal launches. Just make sure the extra link has a reason to exist. Easter eggs are fun when they deepen the story, not when they distract from it.

4. Turn the Continue button into a designed moment#

If you’ve seen Kendra’s recent Mighty posts and videos, you may have seen the Continue button hack: placing an animated GIF over a Rise Continue button, then removing the background so it reads more like selectable text.

In Mighty Wrapped, the team took that idea one step further. Amy points out that the previous version made you want to click the arrow—but the arrow itself wasn’t actually clickable. So the team created a Mighty code snippet that brings the icon and button behavior together.

That means the arrow can now be part of the clickable Continue interaction, not just a visual layer sitting on top of it.

The course uses this treatment in a few places, including a “Reveal the stats” moment and a button near the end of the experience. It’s a small interaction detail, but it removes friction. If the visual design tells the learner, “click here,” the clickable area should match that expectation.

5. Use a scrolling number effect for stats#

A wrapped-style course needs numbers. The “Reveal the stats” interaction uses a scrolling number effect that animates into the final stat.

Here’s the fun part: when you scroll away and come back, the number animation plays again.

That behavior fits the content especially well. Stats are more engaging when they have a reveal, and the animation gives the learner a reason to pause instead of skimming past the number.

This was created as a Mighty code snippet and is intended to be available in the Mighty code catalog for customization. So if you’re building a results recap, impact report, course metrics summary, or launch retrospective, this is the kind of snippet that can make a key number feel more memorable.

6. Mix in native Rise interactions where they fit#

Not every moment in Mighty Wrapped is custom. The team intentionally used familiar Rise interactions too, including flip cards.

That’s a good design choice. When every section is heavily customized, the course can start to feel visually busy—or expensive to maintain. Native Rise blocks give the learner familiar interaction patterns and help the build stay efficient.

The trick is to style and sequence those blocks so they still belong to the larger experience. In Mighty Wrapped, the flip cards sit alongside custom typography, animated icons, quotes, and stat reveals, so they feel like part of the same system rather than a default block dropped in for convenience.

7. Make a Rise process block feel more like a card carousel#

One of the most specific custom touches came from Brianna: a code snippet that makes the image inside a Rise process block sit flush with the card.

By removing the gaps or padding around the image edge, the process block looks more like a card sliding into view. That’s a subtle visual shift, but it changes the perceived quality of the interaction.

If you’ve used process blocks in Rise, you know they’re useful but can sometimes feel very “standard Rise.” Making the image flush with the card helps the block feel more designed without changing the underlying interaction pattern.

This is a good example of where Mighty can help: not by replacing Rise, but by giving you more control over the visual details that stakeholders often notice.

8. Build quote moments from actual Rise quote blocks#

Near the end of the course, the team used a native Rise quote block—but styled it beyond the default look.

They replaced the image, adjusted the typography, and removed the background card treatment so the quote sits more naturally in the layout. The block still starts from a familiar Rise component, but the final result feels more custom and integrated.

The course also includes testimonials and quotes collected over the year, which gives the recap more warmth. Product stats are useful, but voice-of-customer moments make the story feel grounded.

For your own projects, don’t overlook quote blocks. With the right styling, they can become:

• Customer or learner testimonials
• Executive messages
• Pull quotes from a policy or report
• Reflection prompts
• Story moments inside a scenario

9. Use layout blocks to create rhythm#

Between the more animated moments, Mighty Wrapped uses well-composed text layouts: two-column grids, image-and-text blocks, and sections with simple dividers.

One section uses a two-column grid with carefully arranged typography and small dividers in each area. Another uses Mighty’s image and text modifications so each image bleeds off the edge, paired with clean type.

These sections are doing important pacing work. After a stat reveal or animated transition, the learner needs a quieter section to read, scan, or orient themselves. Strong layout is what keeps the course from becoming a string of effects.

A helpful way to think about it: motion creates emphasis, but layout creates trust.

10. Add transitions with purpose#

The course uses Mighty transitions throughout, especially between major sections. These transitions help the course feel continuous as the learner moves through the recap.

Because wrapped-style experiences are often more narrative than instructional, transitions matter. They create the feeling of moving through chapters rather than jumping between unrelated blocks.

The important part is that they’re not doing all the work. The transitions support the structure that’s already there: opening, stats, community moments, feature wishes, upcoming releases, and the final surprise.

11. End with a surprise, but keep it built from blocks#

The ending brings several pieces together: the custom button treatment with an icon, Mighty icons that fly in, an animated GIF, and a final wrapped-style moment.

Amy also points out that the final section uses a quote block as its foundation. Again, that’s the pattern across the build: start with Rise where it makes sense, then use Mighty to shape the interaction and visual polish.

There’s also a community thread linked from the course for “Mighty wishes”—feature requests and ideas from users. That link is not just a call to action. It reinforces what the whole experience is about: the community helped shape Mighty, and the team wants that conversation to continue.

Why this build works#

The strongest part of Mighty Wrapped 2025 is that it doesn’t treat Rise as a limitation to hide. It treats Rise as the structure, then uses Mighty to tune the details that create a more memorable experience.

That’s often the sweet spot for real course work. You may not have time to build a fully custom microsite. You may need something your team can edit later. You may need to stay inside Rise because that’s your organization’s standard. But you still want the course to feel designed.

This build shows a practical path:

• Use native Rise blocks for structure and maintainability
• Use Mighty for typography, spacing, backgrounds, and visual control
• Use snippets selectively for interactions Rise doesn’t provide natively
• Use animation where it adds emphasis or delight
• Keep the story moving with clear section pacing

A note on accessibility and restraint#

Animated GIFs, moving numbers, floating buttons, and fly-in icons can make a course feel lively—but they should be used thoughtfully.

If you borrow ideas from this build, consider where motion genuinely supports meaning. A stat reveal is a strong use case. A moving background can work if it stays subtle. A floating button is helpful if it’s clearly optional and doesn’t block the course content.

As always, keep readability, contrast, and learner control in mind—especially when you’re using motion-heavy visual treatments.

The takeaway#

Mighty Wrapped 2025 is a good reminder that a Rise course can feel expressive without abandoning the Rise workflow. Start with the blocks you already know, then use Mighty to refine the moments your learners and stakeholders will actually feel: the opening, the transitions, the stats, the quotes, and the final click.

Try one piece of this in your next course—a styled Continue button, a quote block with the card removed, or a stat reveal that earns a pause. Small details can make a standard Rise build feel much more intentional.