Team voting on How Might We statements
Leveraging research and design experiments to improve the player experience and increase retention on a game rewards app.
Playfull
Playfull is a gaming community built to reward users for their time spent playing games.
Role
Product Designer
Process Facilitator
Deliverables
Design Sprints
The Challenge
Playfull was strategizing the next big iteration of their app and knew their decision carried a significant amount of risk. Like many early-stage startups, the execution of ideas often took longer than expected and with a limited runway, one bad move could be extremely damaging. Playfull set out to expand on a core gaming concept, which would require many months of design and engineering without clearly knowing if their solution was something their customers actually wanted. They needed support to get answers quickly and mitigate the risk of resource depletion due to inefficiency.
Our Approach
With Playfull’s primary goal to test and prioritize new features in the shortest amount of time, we decided to run a Design and Iteration Sprint to help the team decide on solutions, build a prototype and test to validate/invalidate solutions with real players in two weeks.
The Design Sprint process gave the team a sound framework to dig deeper into existing challenges and discover potential opportunities within their new ideas.
Winning sketch from the Design Sprint
Prototype used to conduct testing
On the first day of the Design Sprint, the team uncovered a root problem within their existing experience which shifted the Sprint focus from adding new features to addressing onboarding issues they had not been aware of previously. We built the prototype with a focus on the onboarding experience and the first usability test confirmed that their highest priority was to address the onboarding experience rather than add new features.
In the second week, the Iteration Sprint focused on using data we’d gathered in the previous Sprint to help us prototype new solutions for the onboarding experience, which included removing features to reduce complexity. The second usability test helped validate which solutions around the onboarding experience should be implemented, giving the team a clear direction and confidence with how to move forward.
"Working with Maicol through two Design Sprints has fundamentally changed how we operate and build products. The process is a good framework for taking a complex environment, where you don't necessarily know what the problems are, and drilling down into what is important."
Patrick Lu
Co-founder & CEO, Playfull
Teammate sharing inspirations with the rest of the team