Tile Styles
Our post-launch plan for Words With Friends 2 was just as ambitious as the launch itself. We had a long list of features in our backlog and a clear objective but as we began to put these features in front of users one question kept coming up; Why? Why do I care? Why would I do that? Some of our users have been playing the same game for 9+ years. They don’t want anything else. Or so they said, over and over again. Despite the direct feedback their behavior was starting to change. We saw in the data that their powerup consumption and engagement with the coin economy was increasing. We knew we could already influence behavior by rewarding users powerups, coins and even cosmetic rewards like badges. It became clear to us that for these new features to succeed we would need to introduce more ways to reward our users. This led us to pursue an old idea, but one of the boldest in Words With Friends history: Tile Styles. This may sound like hyperbole but I have been part of two redesigns of the product and we barely touched the styling of the tiles in both of those. The gameboard was sacred and we were about to make a big change. Here are the goals we were trying to accomplish by taking that risk.
Feature Goals
To increase engagement in systems that reward Tile Styles.
To appeal to a large portion of our audience.
Prove user interest in cosmetic rewards, items of expression , and representation of status.
The leads began brainstorming reward vectors of all types. Cosmetic items, gameplay enhancements and bonuses. Anything that we thought would resonate with our users. The list included gameboard themes, themed tiles, a few new powerups, Weekly Challenge bonus points, and many more. We decided to put some of these features in front of users and see what they thought. Tile Styles topped the list for both cosmetic and gameplay enhancements. We pursued the feature but since it was such a big change for users we needed to prove it was worth it. Below are some of the methods we used to test these rewards with our users and to get conviction in Tile Styles. From the start we asked for user feedback on Tile Styles and optimized based on that feedback throughout development.
A maxdiff survey that weighs potential features against each other.
In-game click tests. To gauge interest from active users.
3x Consumer Insights interviews with Prototypes.
2x General surveys on potential art and general user interest.
Soft launch to test and optimize.
Tile Styles tested well consistently. It also satisfied one of the main goals for our users. Which was to provide a variety of ways in which we could reward users. Scrabble purists don’t want to use powerups because they view them as cheating so maybe cosmetic rewards would be more appealing. Once the positive survey results started to roll in we began development on the feature and I led the creation of the feature criteria/design pillars and spec from the UX side.
Design Pillars / Feature Criteria
Aspirational
Users are driven to earn Tile Styles and “collect them all”.
Something for everyone
Tile Styles gives everyone a way to express themselves and something to work towards.
Marketable Forever
Players look forward to finding out which Tile Styles are in the next release and which are next for them.
Basic UX
We needed a reward for multiple other systems so we wanted to spread the Tile Styles love out. We didn’t want to give out a whole Tile Style for a single action. It seemed as if a collection-like mechanic would best solve that problem. There were a lot of ways we could execute the solution and there were a lot of stakeholders. We had a lot of pressure from executives to create an alphabet collection where users would collect each letters to earn the ability to use the Tile Style. It sounded good in theory but the experience was confusing, and it limited our ability to reward users frequently, over a long period of time. In finding a overall narrative and visual language to translate progress we came up with many ideas that were ultimate rejected. We wanted to lean into an existing experience which is why we inevitably went with the progress bar used in the Weekly Challenge and Events features. After countless iterations and Consumer Insights interviews, where we presented Flinto prototypes, we decided on Paint as the unit of measurement that the players would collect. Paint worked the best because it reemphasized the fact that these Tiles were only cosmetic. Below is an example of the alphabet version but there were many other concepts and explorations, like pieces of the object (eg shards of ruby) and a standard building block material.
One exploration of the collection mechanic where users collected the letters in the alphabet.
How it works
Players earn Tile Styles Paint from Mystery Boxes earned by engaging with various Words With Friends features. When the player collects all the paint for a Tile Style, they unlock the ability to use it against their friends. Players each control their own Tile Styles and can see each other’s Styles in-game and on the gameslist.
Users earn paint by winning Mystery Boxes in other features
Once they collect x paint drops they can use the Tile Style on the gameboard.
Users can change their Tile Style from the gameboard or inventory screen.
Seasonal Premium Tiles are available for sale in the store.
Visual Design
The impact of this feature on the gameslist and the gameboard is huge. Suddenly our game is alive with color. It also had the added bonus of allowing players to tell which player played which tile. Below are some wireframes and a description of the general flows and functionality.
Results
Tile Styles set a new standard for adoption rates in Words With Friends. It double our expectations. For our launch event we paired with the Susan G. Koman Foundation to create a Breast Cancer Awareness Event that raised 100k. It was an all-around effort between the studio and partner teams (Marketing, Consumer Insights, etc) and it was a smashing success. Tile Styles was the most collaborative feature with Consumer Insights and Marketing that I’ve ever worked on and a lot of the success came from those relationships. We are now executing towards v2 and our ultimate vision for the feature. Below are some high level results.
Significant increase in engagement with surrounding features
Double our expected adoption rate
Increase in IAP revenue
My Role
Drove product strategy and vision for v1 and beyond.
Responsible for presenting and explaining strategy to executives and other stakeholders.
Design direction - At its peak 3 other designers were working on Tile Styles. I spent the majority of my time directing the overall strategy, design work and co-ordinating with 3rd party teams (marketing, art vendors, etc.)
Art direction and managing vendor pipeline to create Tile Style Art.
Words With Friends
I was one of the first team members on The New Words With Friends by Zynga. The team was tasked with updating a 5 year old game without changing the gameplay itself. A majority of the changes came in the form of new UI/UX and visual design. For the visual design and marketing we looked to evolve the brand while maintaining the friendly and familiar look that the hundreds of millions of people who had downloaded the original had loved. In 2015 I was awarded the Spirit Award for the largest individual contribution to a product for my work.
I created a large amount of the design systems seen in the game including the main navigation system and the gameboard UX. We targeted a few major pain points that were often brought up by user's in our research. We went through countless iterations, did extensive user testing and interviews to come up with the final result that satisfied those goals.
- Create a visual hierarchy with "Your Move" games at the top.
- Allow users to find matches quicker.
- Expose content that was previously buried.
- Allow users to easily navigate on larger phones.
- Modernize the visual design and branding.
The game is available on iOS and Android
Our solutions
Users repeatedly told us that the "Your Move" games were the most important thing on the games list (home screen). To make sure that "Your Move" games were at the top of the visual hierarchy we made the profile pictures for those cells twice as big as the "Their Move" cells.
To allow users to find matches quicker we added the create game page to the main navigation. A recommended Friends section was added at the bottom of the page to reduce clicks. We also created the community feature. Which borrowed its Swipe UX from Tinder.
We created a tab navigation to expose some of the content that was previously hidden under the hamburger button at the top left of the home screen. To increase their ability to navigate on larger screens we introduced a swipe mechanic between main navigation screens. The visual design was a convention that we took from popular Android applications like Pinterest.
Process
An early sketch of the create game / friends screen. You can see an evolution of this sketch in the wireframes below.
Research and Notes
To start any project off I like to gather as much data as possible. This means a lot of player interviews, competitive analysis and reviewing the product itself. I write notes and doodle in my sketchbook. I run tests and experiments to gather as much quantitative data as possible. Whatever I can do to understand the user and their motivations. I'm also trying to solidify product goals, philosophy and strategy. Breaking the product down to find what they call the core loop in gaming. This idea applies to any other software development. One of my favorite PMs phrased it as only a PM could; "find your key metric". Do your homework so you can understand the user and make informed decisions.
A Lapsed Words With Friends user playing a prototype of a new feature. Player interviews are a great way to get feedback and to understand your users.
It's not just about quantitative data. It's also important to understand the user from a more emotional standpoint if you want to make a connection. I like to get to insight into their behavior in a variety of ways. You can run fake ads to see what creative works best, have players fill out surveys and do in app experiments/tests. We also prototype features and put our work in front of actual users throughout the design process. It's important to move quickly, without too much engineering time being spent. I have utilized a variety of prototyping software including Game Salad, Lottie/After Effects, Flinto, Axure, Invision to name a few.
Here's a link to a Flinto Prototype which we tested with users for a feature called "Fast Play". The password is "whiskey".
One of the Design Challenge sessions I have led with a cross discipline teams. Participants list out criteria and the challenges they may face then they reframe it from a user's perspective. As Associate Experience Design Director its my job to evangelize user centric design principles.
Brainstorming and Sketching
No idea is a bad idea at this point. It's important to cast a wide net. If I'm working in a group like on Words With Friends than a co-working session is a good way to generate ideas and keep everyone involved. It's always better to collaborate with a cross discipline team in my opinion. Sometimes it's not possible or the feature is really small and it's not necessary. I will quickly sketch out ideas in my sketch book otherwise.
I like to create a list of criteria as I go. It helps to be able to remember what's important, visually group them, write notes etc. I also like to list out the challenges. If the challenges are technology based or if they are challenges for myself or the team then I will discard them. This is where I start focusing on the user. All of the challenges should be written from the users perspective. For example if the challenge is "It's hard to find all of them content" than the user statement could be "As a user I want to be able to find what I want" or something of that nature.
The goal is to come out of the first session with a list of principles that you can use to select which features are best for your product. Below are some of the principles we operate with at Words With Friends. From there you come up with specific ideas and features. Focusing on drawing like sketches and doodles as well as writing descriptions.
Sample Words With Friends Design Principles
- Protect the core
- Scalable systems
- Dynamic / Feels alive
UX, Wireframes and Flow Diagrams
Once I have an idea of the content I move to flow diagrams or wireframes in Sketch or Illustrator. It's important to put yourself in the user's shoes at this point so you catch all of the edge cases. When creating the wireframes I keep them to scale so that I don't surprised in visual design. This is about seeing what layouts, content, etc actually fit. I work in grayscale exclusively at this point to avoid feedback on visuals.
The wireframes above were early concepts for the Home screen or "Gameslist" as we called it. Since we heard in user insights that players love the "checklist" or "Your Move" section we knew the main focus would be the Home screen. The exercise became about which additional content to include, the number of tabs and what deserved a spot on the main navigation.
The final main navigation (see visual design section for reference) was based on a popular design trend on android at the time. It was used by apps like Pinterest and the tab style from the Google Play Store. Swiping from tab to tab allowed users on larger devices to easily navigate from page to page. This was before the Android Material Design guideline had been released advocating for bottom navigation for this same reason.
Original Words With Friends Gameboard. Notice there are no images and that the names/score are in tiny text to the bottom left.
Words With Friends is about connecting with people so we placed a large photo of the other player at the top of the screen. I also advocated that more prominence be given to the name and score. In the original Words With Friends the name and score were buried in the bottom left hand corner in very small print. As you can see in the screenshot above there was no photo at all. The Gameboard wireframes above are all explorations of the header with various sizes and positions of the elements.
A lot of the time design is about simplification. This was the case with this screen as well. In order for the user to be able to concentrate on their tiles and who they were playing a lot of elements needed to be removed or made contextual. We used Data from the original Gameboard to make these decisions. The less engagement a feature got the more it was buried.
Visual Design
I personally find Photoshop to still be the best tool for visual design. It has a robust toolset that allows you to get far more granular than say Sketch. When starting visual design I always start by taking a look some of the competitors and then picking my favorites. A big influence on the final design was Ruzzle.
In this stage I like to provide a couple of options with a spectrum of styling options. I'm still playing with UX at this point. Tweaking and iterating based on the fact that I am now counting pixels. For Words With Friends I was working remotely so I needed to have these documents speak for themselves. Usually I would present these in person and talk through the finer details. This was only the first round of concepts I did for "New Words". Part way through the process iOS came out with the new flat look.
The explorations below show the evolution of the visual design. We starting exploring after screen #2 below which was when iOS 7 was released. We found that balancing a flat style with the art style usually found in gaming was quite difficult. The screens below show an evolution that took almost a year. The first screen is the original Words With Friends. The last screen is the current style seen in the App Store.
Working with Engineers
Due to my limited coding ability I need to collaborate with Engineers to make mobile products. To bridge the gap in skill sets, perspective and experience I prepare detailed spec sheets so that the Engineers know exactly what I want. This helps hold them accountable for delivering pixel perfect UI. Over the years I've evolved the guides to include more and more. I also put together style guides for engineers. The images above are from one that I created for Words With Friends.
Despite all these documentation I also find it important to go over the engineers implementation. In fact you should be testing over, over and over again. I will often provide "Design QA Specs" for the engineers to red line, call out and correct issues.
Zynga Poker – Scratchers Mini-Game
I sometimes worked as a sort of a design mercenary at Zynga. Like in this case where I designed this mini-game for Zynga Poker. The scratch effect was a difficult feature to design and develop. The outcome was an impressive increase in revenue for a mini-game and small feature. Earning something like 20k in additional revenue a day when it was first released. Due to the success on iOS, it was implemented on Android and iPad as well. It was also a feature that was reused by multiple games at Zynga. Last time I checked it was still in game. We created it in 2012.
Working with Engineers / VFX
Here's the scratcher card after the user has "scratched" the hidden sections. I collaborated closely with the engineering team locally and in San Francisco to get the scratched effect right. We iterated on the texture in visual design and particle effects in production many times before landing on the final design seen here.