Case Study ยท Game Jolt Quests

  • New Feature Implementation

  • Strategy

    Interaction Design

    Prototyping

    Haptics

    Brand

 

The Prompt

Game Jolt is a social media platform for Gen Z and Alpha gamers. Our official app launch was coming in hot and the events team wanted a way to host an in-app promotion to boost app downloads and retain users.

Context

Prior to the app launch I was garnering support for the concept of quests, which would use game design to develop the platform's social engagement. This would be a large and deeply embedded system and we hadn't figured out how or when to build the idea. I saw a strategic opportunity to develop the system to solve the event team's problem while setting us up for the future.

Key Metrics

  • App Downloads
  • Engagement (DAU)
  • Retention (7-Day)

Partners

  • Director of Events
  • CTO
 

Phase 1: Initial Design for MVP

To move fast for an MVP, I parsed the design work into three main phases starting with the core system:

  1. Define underlying management system
  2. Lo-fi wireframing and user flows
  3. Base visual design
  4. Prototyping the app launch event quest
  5. Refine with haptics and animations
 

Phase 2: Retention through onboarding flow

I reworked the existing onboarding flow into a quest introducing new users to key elements of the platform. This incentivizes natural exploration by giving them rewards for engaging with major features, while a second quest encourages users to check in daily for additional rewards to build retention.

 

Phase 3: Engagement with daily + weekly quests

A core tenet of the original concept was to use quests to build long term engagement on the platform. Considering what we could gamify and what kind of behavior we wanted to encourage, I designed an initial set of daily and weekly quests with three guiding principles:

  • Encourage positive social interaction
  • Easy to complete, in 2-5 minutes
  • Build visual language with illustrations
 

Impact

Positive community feedback was critical in gauging the success of a large unknown feature like quests. The inital MVP net over 3000 daily active users for the month of March, up 130% with high retention for new app users. More excitingly, the team saw the real quest reward over time:

  • Emergent social behavior developed within the community
  • Foundational for building future events and features for the team

3000

Daily active users

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