Summary
My task was to design a monetizable application with a fortune-telling element for a group of young entrepreneurs who wanted to create a fun and entertaining app for their target audience.
It’s important to them that the application has a social-sharing element to it and has a way of monetization.
My Role : UX / UI Designer
Tools: Figma
Time Span: 5 Weeks
Problem Statement
The challenge is to create an engaging application with a predictive element that appeals to the target audience of young, employed "geeks" who have a passion for card games, board games, and sci-fi/fantasy franchises.
The application should provide an entertaining and fun experience by incorporating sci-fi and fantasy vibes, as well as humor and wordplay.
The application should also enable users to easily share the predictions with friends and on social media platforms.
01. Design Process
02. Competitive Research
In the domain of mobile apps, I haven't found one that has all the elements that are contained in the project brief.
Apps with an element of fortune-telling are mostly online tarot cards, horoscopes or a crystal ball and give "serious" fortune-telling without a dose of humor or any genre or pop-culture references, most of them are also with very limited interactivity.
For the competitive analysis, I selected the most popular mobile applications that contain the most important common component - fortune-telling.
Co-Star
Strenghts
Relationship analysis - Co-Star allows users to connect with their friends and compare their birth charts and astrological compatibility.
Personalized experience - Co-Star offers highly personalized horoscopes and astrology readings, based on the user's exact birth data.
Daily updates - The app updates its horoscopes and astrology readings on a daily basis and notifies the user fof important astrological events.
Clean design - The app has a very minimalistic design and is easy to navigate through.
Weaknesses
Limited interactivity - No input from the user is needed, except from data entry after the first login
The Pattern
Strenghts
Relationship analysis - The Pattern allows users to connect with their friends and compare their birth charts and astrological compatibility.
Social features - The app allows users not only to connect with their friends and compare their birth charts and astrological compatibility but also connect with other users that have similar patterns and personalities
Personalized experience - The app offers highly personalized horoscopes and astrology readings, based on the user's exact birth data. The analyses change over time to track changes in life and provide new interpretations.
Daily updates - The app updates its horoscopes and astrology readings on a daily basis and notifies the user fof important astrological events
Weaknesses
Limited interactivity - No input from the user is needed, except from data entry after the first login
Kismet
Strenghts
Variety of readings - The app offers a variety of different horoscopes, multiple sorts of card readings, palm and face readings. It’s possible for the user to play minigames to earn coins that allow you to “buy” readings.
Feeling as if you are talking to a real astrologist - The app uses AI to generate card readings so that it feels as if you have picked and have been assigned a personal astrologist to do your card or palm reading.
Weaknesses
Overwhelming amount of content - Kismet offers a large amount of content, including horoscopes, tarot readings, and mini-games. While this is great for users who enjoy exploring different aspects of astrology, it can be overwhelming for others who just want a simple horoscope or reading.
Riddled with ads - Ads after almost every interaction, oftentimes 2 ads in a row, none of them is skippable
03. User research
I conducted a survey with 22 participants who belong to the target group.
The survey aimed to gather insights into participants' preferences regarding board or card games, the frequency with which they play these games, what they value about the games they play, how often they play mobile games and their willingness to engage in in-game purchases.
Research Analysis
The survey showed primarily that the participants are part of the desired target group and that the survey data is relevant for my research.
The majority of the target group plays board games on a weekly or monthly basis and generally prefers fantasy and adventure genres.
In general, the participants don't have a strong preference between multiplayer or singleplayer games, but when they play with others, they value the social interaction and the opportunity to spend quality time with friends and family the most, more than the competitive aspect of games.
Almost half of the respondents rarely play mobile games, while on the other hand, 27.3% of the respondents play mobile games on a daily basis.
Based on the results, it seems that the majority of the participants (45.5%) are not likely to make payments inside a mobile app or game. Additionally, a significant percentage (22.7%) chose a low likelihood rating of 2 out of 5. This suggests that a considerable portion of the participants may not be open to making in-game purchases.
Based on the responses, it appears that most of the participants are interested in sharing their predictions and outcomes from a fortune-telling game or app with their friends.
The option of sharing scores and rankings received relatively fewer responses, indicating again that the users are less likely to be motivated by competing with others and achieving high scores in the game. Social interaction and connecting with others over their personalised experiences seems to be more important to the target audience.
Overall, this suggests that if the goal is to monetize the app through in-app purchases, the app should offer a compelling reason for users to make such purchases, as the majority of the surveyed participants are not likely to do so without significant motivation.
More participants said that they would be more likely to pay for customization options or access to additional content, than for in-game rewards. This suggests that while some users may be motivated by the possibility of in-game rewards, the majority are more interested in broader and more meaningful additions to the app or game, such as more customization options or additional events and content.
04. Concept User Feedback
The users were presented with 3 concepts of the prediction app. This is the summary of the reasons why they chose the existing concept.
Conclusion
The users agreed that the first concept has the most potential.
They like that they have choices to make and interact in different ways with the app.
They liked that all the concepts had the option to share prophecies with friends.
The other 2 concepts were interesting to the users because there is movement involved, but agreed that the first concepts advantage is that they have choices to make and influence the outcomes in a way.
05. Information Architecture
06. Flow chart
07. Low-fidelity Wireframes
08. Mid-fidelity Wireframes
09. Usability Testing
First click testing
The users were asked to select the button where they would click to brew a potion.
Among 5 users, all of them chose the right button.
Preference testing
The participants were asked to choose between 2 screens and pick the one they prefer more.
All 5 participants chose the screen where the button says “brew” instead just the icon and that were the comments they left after picking that screen.
Prototype testing
The participants were asked to go through the main flow and complete the task of brewing and drinking the potion.
All the participants managed to go through the flow in less than 30 seconds, most of it spent choosing ingredients, without misclicks.
On a scale from 1 (very difficult) to 5 (very easy) all of them said it was very easy to navigate through the flow.
10. Design System
Typography
11. High-fidelity Prototype
12. Usability testing & Iterations
I conducted usability testing of the high-fidelity prototype with three users.
The users were given tasks to navigate through the main flow, complete the registration process, add friends, and make a purchase in the in-app store.
Based on their feedback, iterations were made on the following flows:
Main Flow: Users mentioned that they found the "Settings," "Add Friends," and "Potion Library" unnecessary to be accessed from anywhere other than the main screen.
When selecting ingredients, they expressed that it would be more convenient if they could open the "Recipes" directly from that screen and easily return to the ingredient selection screen.
They felt that having the "Recipes" screen accessible from elsewhere would require them to remember the combinations until they reached the "Choose Ingredients" screen.
Ingredient Selection: Given the number of ingredients, users found it annoying to scroll through the entire list to reach the "Brew" or "Exit" buttons. To address this, a fixed-position button was implemented for easier access during scrolling.
