Case study
Creating stickiness through gamification for a leading prepaid telco service
As telcos continue to face competition by MVNOs, we designed an incentivized mini-game to offer greater customer value apart from price.
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The ask
I was tasked to design a mini-game to improve engagement on Singtel’s prepaid services mobile app.
The mini-game had to: ​
1. Be simple to understand, yet fun to play​
2. Improve customer engagement, as measured by:
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Increased MAU
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Increased DAU
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Number of game sessions
3. Increase loyalty and social sharing, as measured by:
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Reduced churn
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Increased app installs
My responsibilities included:
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Fronting meetings with stakeholders
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Interviewing stakeholders and surveying customers
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Storyboarding, designing and prototyping the mini-game
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Developing the game assets and animations
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Overseeing development and testing from a design standpoint
Timeframe: 4 weeks
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Research
We surveyed 5 prepaid users to understand their mobile usage habits
1. The prepaid base comprised largely of non-local, blue-collar workers, many of whom were not native English speakers​.
2. Majority of prepaid users are money and time-sensitive.
3. Prepaid users are data-conscious and limit their use of mobile apps, including games.
4. Motivation to play mini-games on non-game apps fizzles out once rewards stop being attractive.
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Design challenges
Based on the insights, we had to solve the following design challenges:
The game had to require minimal explanation
We had to use a universally-understood concept to transcend cultural and language barriers amongst the diverse prepaid base.
Game sessions had to be short, yet replayable
We designed each game session to last no longer than a few
seconds, so users could quit at any time without fear of losing
progress. We also limited the number of times users could
play the game.
The game had to be fun even without extrinsic rewards
We designed the game to require a mix of luck and skill and also introduced a leaderboard to encourage competition. This kept
the game engaging even when the pool of rewards was limited.
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Conceptualisation
We came up with a simple game based on a universally-understood concept: fishing.
Prototyping & testing
I developed and tested a Unity prototype with 6 users.
We used the following findings to make a few iterations:
Good
The element of timing and skill was kept participants playing continuously
Most participants played multiple sessions without prompting.
Not so good
The game mechanics did not clearly reflect the fishing theme
Participants had trouble identifying what the game was about.
We addressed this by crafting the game visuals to more closely
relate to fishing.
Not so good
The game mechanics were not as accessible as we thought
Some participants had trouble understanding how to play the game. We focused on making the game mechanics and
reduced the controls to a single tap.
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Designing the UX
In parallel to designing the game, we used wireframing to map out the user journey of discovering and playing the game.
High-fidelity UI & handoff
Finally, we prepared the high-fidelity screens and animations to kickstart development.
To animate our mascot, we prepared a sprite-sheet which could easily be reskinned for festive seasons:
The results
The game was successfully launched in
Jan 2019, after 3 months of development
In the first 2 weeks of launch, hi!Carnival achieved:
> 50,000
new users
> 450,000
game sessions played
About 3 months after launch, the game was reskinned for
a Lunar New Year campaign and achieved:
> 20% increase
in MAU
> 26% increase
in DAU
> 4 million
game sessions played
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