UX Research case: Mobile phone game(loyalty program)

I was responsible for conducting research on a game’s loyalty program. On the first day, it had 10,000 active users. 😱 Interested in learning more? Keep reading

Company: A Vietnamese Telecom

What did they want?
The company had two objectives:

1. To increase client loyalty by creating a mini video game within the company’s app.
2. To replace an existing mini video game that already had many active users. To provide more context, the previous game was very simple, allowing users to win benefits such as free megabytes, free calls, gift cards, etc. Users only needed to press a button and wait for a guinea pig to select a box out of eight. If the box contained a benefit, the user would win it, but if the box was empty, the user received nothing.”

Why did they want this?
The Company had two assumptions:
1. “Creating a challenging video game with multiple levels was aimed at increasing user engagement and loyalty toward Bitel”. Additionally, the company aimed to phase out the existing benefits.

2. “Users were enjoying the previous game (which no longer exists) primarily for its entertainment value, rather than the benefits it offered.”

What my mission was?
As a UX Researcher, I was asked to:

1. Determine the type of game that users desired to play.
2. Compile a research report with recommendations.”

But my real job was: -> To validate those assumptions and get to know our users/clients better, understand how they perceived the current game, identify their needs and pain points, discover insights, and most importantly, make their lives easier :)

Research time! So, what did I do?

(Btw, this requirement was literally within the first week I started working for this company 😅 )

1. First, I engaged in extensive discussions with the team responsible for the current video game at the time. I asked them a multitude of questions, including: Why was this game created? What were the original goals? How did the idea for the new game come about? Why was there a desire for a new game? Essentially, I delved into the ‘why’ behind everything.
2. Once I had gathered all the necessary answers, I proceeded to document my research plan. In essence, my plan consisted of the following key components:”

✔️ I created five distinct groups of users, categorized as follows:

1. Users who frequently played the existing game.
2. Users who played the existing game but not very often.
3. Users who never played the game or played it less than 10 times.

I worked with these groups to uncover several key insights. First, I aimed to understand why some users were highly engaged with the game and what made it so appealing to them. Conversely, I sought to determine why other users found it unexciting, uninteresting, or boring. These were the questions I needed answers to.

Although these were my primary user groups, considering the nature of the telecom industry, users had different payment plans. Therefore, I also worked with two additional sub-groups:

1. Postpaid users — those who paid for the service on a monthly basis.
2. Prepaid users — those who only purchased the SIM card and didn’t subscribe to any service.

This approach allowed me to gain a comprehensive understanding of the diverse user experiences based on their game interactions and payment plans.”

✔️ I conducted semi-structured deep interviews with the various user groups. To ensure consistency and comprehensiveness, I created an interview guide, which I duly validated and sought feedback on from my coworkers. I aimed to interview six users per primary group, and since I had two additional sub-groups (postpaid and prepaid users), I conducted a total of 36 interviews.

✔️ Surveys, Surveys Everywhere! I’m not a big fan of surveys for a few reasons. They aren’t always accurate due to factors such as users not fully understanding the questions or being in a hurry and providing quick responses. Additionally, many survey questions are closed-ended, and people often say one thing but act differently. However, in some cases, like this one, surveys were necessary to gather more data. It makes sense since it’s a large company with thousands of users, and the company sought substantial data.

✔️ User Personas, Reports, and Recommendations. These were the deliverables I presented at the end of the research.

Interviews: Debriefing Time

One aspect I personally dislike is waiting until all the interviews are completed to begin the debriefing process. Why? Because even though I record the interview sessions (which I do), I prefer having fresh information. Consequently, I aim to debrief right after the interview, or at the very least, on the same day.

During this stage, I categorize various aspects, including pain points, reasons for user engagement, suggested improvements, dislikes, the users’ gaming habits, their daily activities, and even details about their families. I compile this information for the creation of user personas, which I believe is one of the most effective ways to introduce our team to the true nature of our users.

For this process, I used the DoveTail app for information debriefing.

Sorry for the quality

Matching Surveys with Interviews

While I personally have reservations about surveys, I genuinely recognize the significance of aligning quantitative and qualitative data. Here are the connections I identified:

Findings

After making a match between the surveys and interviews I found some very powerful insights. With those findings, we were ready to start the co-creation stage :)

Co-Creation!

This was a very fun part!

What was the goal?
-To create a new product that can solve the user needs -based on the research.

I used miro!

Co-creation workshop in a nutshell:
(what did I do?)

✔️ Presented the research findings to the participants.
✔️ Shared the personas to facilitate participants’ understanding and empathy with users.
✔️ Utilized Miro with the participants to generate video game ideas that aligned with user pain points and desires.
✔️ Conducted a voting process where participants selected the ideas they favored the most and those that appeared most capable of addressing pain points effectively.

Final Report

After voting for the “best” ideas that emerged in the co-creation workshop, I created a final report containing all the research cases. This report was intended for my UX designer and developer friends, enabling them to bring this idea to life.

Final Product

So, what was the output or final product? Well, we retired the initial game, as planned. More importantly, we successfully delivered what both the business and the users desired:

• We developed a more challenging, yet still user-friendly game. This game incorporates the features users wanted, providing more benefits and additional opportunities to play. They now have these advantages because the game offers more levels.

At present, our new game boasts 20 levels, and we have plans for further expansion. Remarkably, we garnered 10,000 active users on the very first day of the launch!

Everyone is happy 😊

Learnings:

This was my first experience working 100% remotely, and despite the challenges, I loved it! I enjoyed discovering insights, gaining a better understanding of the users, and knowing that I was dedicating all my efforts to improving someone else’s life. That’s the best feeling for me.

✔️ When it comes to remote interviews, even though video calls can be more effective, be flexible. Sometimes your users might have a poor internet connection, or there could be other reasons preventing them from turning on the video. In such cases, audio calls are acceptable.

✔️ If you plan to use a digital tool like Miro or Mural, be aware that not everyone may find it user-friendly. Provide some assignments beforehand to help the participants become more familiar with these types of tools.

Tools I used:
✔️DoveTail, Miro: for debriefing, clustering, affinity maps.
✔️Google meet, zoom, whatsapp: for videocalls/calls
✔️Google Forms, sheets: for surveys