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Europe
Europe
Creator Clans 💡
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I pitched a Clan team concept to Creator Now management in order to encourage users to earn points and ultimately engage more with the site.
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After I researched, designed, tested and handed off we found this project's impact increased engagement, returning users, community and motivation to take actions on the platform.
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For context: Creator Now provides education and tools for people to become content creators.
Solution:
During researching and brainstorming I discovered a fascinating game structure, in the popular game Clash of Clans. After strategizing a way we could implement such a structure in order to encouraging accountability, I pitched the idea to management and designed the project myself while working with 2 engineers to bring Clans and Clan Challenges to life.
Problem:
Not many people returned to the platform consistently or were motivated to post videos in the platform. Even though users could earn some points by posting (which could win them prizes) the majority of users remained lurkers.
Step A: Research
This project all started when I led a brainstorm on how we can improve the user experience and we got to focus a lot on gamification. This brainstorm led me to speak with my friend who's a PM at a gaming company - and I began diving deeper into how we can use gamification to strengthen the user community.
Clan & Clan Challenge Insporation:
Tools
Team
1 Designer (me)
2 Engineers
2 Managers (founders)
What game design principals does Clash of Clans use?
The social game of Clash of Clans has a bottom up team forming structure where clan members design, invite and form their own group - and can leave at anytime or get kicked out by a leader. In order to win the game a player must join a clan, because by completing the challenges as a team you're able to earn more points. High performing clan members have an advantage to join better clans because they have high scores and can contribute to the total clan score.
The Clan Challenges form a live time sensitivity which creates scarcity, because if clan members don't log on to participate the leaders could remove them. In reaction this live action sensations opens up communication and clan members begin to form a clan identity and stronger bonds. This facilitated interaction thus helps build platform habituation, accountability and loyalty.
Step B: Pitch to Management & Wireframes
Using the prioritization from management during this step I was able to create iterations of different displays for us to sync the best direction, plan entry points and identify challenges.
Management Created User Stories
I Sketched Wireframes
Clan Profile page (leaders have different variation)
Redesign of Homepage with mini leaderboard
Some Challenges:
A Leader Leaving a Clan in The MVP
The behavioral rules determined that you could only be part of 1 clan, and that as a clan member you can remove yourself to join a new clan or the leader may kick you out. For the MVP it was decided that if a clan leader would leave, a new leader would be selected at random. However, this posed a problem because for the MVP the invitation to join a clan was a very minimal process which included sending a link to the leader in platform chat. Since the leader could potentially be a not very active user, they may miss requests and discourage others who tried to join. As a temporary solution, we made sure users can request to join as many clans as they like until they're accepted.
Being Introduced to The Platform by Clan Invite
A user that was invited through a URL link off the platform and is introduced to the platform for the first time as a clan member - may not be aware that they can also create their own clan. To solve this we kept the Create a Clan button visible in some places even for those who are in clans. If a participant of a clan were to click this button they would get a modal letting them know they would have to leave their clan to create a new one.
Step C: Design, Test & Iterate
During user testing we found that that the concept was a hit, and it was no suprise to us that when users started using it after it was deployed, they were blown away. We read their messages in the general chat as users declared to other members what their dream clan members are like while they formed, what challenges they plan to do and we were even amazed to see clan members start posting photos of themselves doing real life meetups.
Mini leaderboard addition to the lower end of the main home page in the app.
User profile showing clan (color is customized by user's selected theme).
Impact
After reviewing the data it became clear that these tweaks in game structure were one of the biggest contributors to users engaging for longer with the platform, coming back frequently, sharing clan links with friends off platform thus enhancing platform discoverability and building a loyal community within each other.
The Clan and Clan Challenges features were released on the first day of a Cohort launch, and it resulted in having the highest amount of users come on to the site, having the longest duration of users interacting on site, biggest catalyst for users to build community while engaging on the platform and longest duration of high amount of daily returning users coming back to the platform.
Some users even went as far as adding their clan affiliation on their Instagram bio, thus proving how the loyalty of this game design, much like with sports, encourages group identity. We also witnessed for the first time real life relationships being created as Clan members began having meetups to work on their projects together.
I feel incredibly glad this project went well and am proud of the end result whilst being grateful that management took on my idea and believed in it enough to give it a shot!
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