StormX
Helping users earn anywhere, anytime, from any device.
Context
Helping people around the world earn by rewarding users for completing tasks in a game-like platform Storm Play. As the lead designer at Storm, I helped raise $32 Million during the tokensale ICO by designing web experiences, mobile UX, and marketing materials for the blockchain community, crypto-enthusiasts, and freelancers.
My ultimate goal as a UX Designer in this blockchain space was to help people understand what blockchain technology means and find ways to design experiences that provide solutions on the blockchain for user's problems.
What made this experience different is that Storm dove into a space that was so new to everyone, the revolutionary technology, blockchain.
Mission
To help anyone, anywhere earn by bringing together a community of “Storm Players” (users who earn) and
“Storm Makers” (task creators for users to complete).
By tapping into the freelance “gig” economy, we sought to provide opportunities for users to build skills and improve the economic health of millions around the globe.
Ultimately, my journey pushed me to convince blockchain enthusiasts to choose our platform and token over hundreds of others, and retain our user base of “Storm Players” by improving our platform’s experience.
​By utilising blockchain, the product goals were to create 3 ways to earn:
Storm Play enables people to earn by completing tasks on their mobile devices. The Android app currently has 300K monthly active users spread across 187 different countries.
Android app
Problem
However, many users have been experiencing navigation problems as well as trouble finding pages that should be intuitive (such as, how to withdraw and payment history or status), so I embarked on redesigning the Storm Play app experience.
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The poor user retention rate has been causing Storm to lose revenue as well as partners (advertisers on our platform: “Storm Makers”).
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The ultimate goal of the app is to help our users EARN in cryptocurrencies while trying new apps:
Subscription services +
mobile games
But Storm Play has been losing users due to a confusing UI, causing them to get lost in the app and unable to earn. Also, as a product focused on “gamified micro-tasks”, there weren't enough user-journeys and rewards motivating them to return to the app.
Challenges
The greatest challenge I faced was to identify points in the experience that drive users away. Since the app was originally developed by the founders, most of the design choices (placement of features, flow of experience, etc.) weren’t backed by any research. ​
My measurement of success was to maintain this consistent and growing user base, which would help increase revenue and drive the business forward.
User
Personas
The main groups of individuals Storm Play targets are: crypto-enthusiasts, low-income individuals, and gamers. By looking into different types of statuses in games, I formed a list of personas or characters for various levels that players can achieve based on behaviour.
Research
As a gamer, I've always been intrigued by mobile game design. I was ecstatic to learn more about gamification and game design mechanics to help retain our users. ​
I studied a variety of mechanics, strategies, game UI, and played games (to look for how they successfully retain users), and talked to our advisory board of professionals in the gaming industry. ​
Gamification mechanics focus on guiding "Storm Players" (users) through journeys with these phases:
Each action-loop serves to boost a user's engagement in the gamification design process.
An effective gamification design framework includes action-loops that take into account the user’s intrinsic motivation.
Becoming the user +
QA testing
I became an active user on Storm Play for several months, trying out each of the tasks (every time a new one was released onto the platform) to QA test and make sure bugs I find are confronted by developers. By the time I understood why users were losing interest, I had an inventory of problems to tackle and better solutions for creating an experience.
Interviewing + studying
user behaviour
In addition to the people around me who have used the app before, I conducted user research with other product people and blockchain enthusiasts to gather their initial reactions, asking a set of questions to have a better understanding of which areas they struggle with. This was an eye-opening activity since each individual was focused on some pages more than others, indicating that the goal of the app wasn't clear.
Analysing problems +
finding patterns
Since we already have an existing global user base (mostly outside of the US), I requested Zendesk access (list of our customer support tickets) to identify trends in problems that our users struggle with in our app, and reached out to our support team lead (in the Philippines) to identify most occurring and urgent requests from our users.
User Flows
Working with the Engineering team, I decided to restructure the whole app architecture. I broke down each component of the app experience to rearrange the information architecture (by drawing out sitemaps and taxonomies). ​
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Mapping out the app’s experience showed me how confusing it is to find some of the pages, and the unnecessary amount of steps the user needs to take in order to reach them. ​
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It's not particularly intuitive on how users can start a "Storm Task" from the home page. On the detailed task page, users have to look for what they are playing for and the steps required to reach those amounts. The tasks needed more incentives through rewards and indicators to finish the task and the user-journey guidance.
Task
The "Video Claim" tab is another method of earning. This section is for users to watch video ads and earn. This section also needs to be improved with animated rewards, congratulating users, and motivation to keep earning more.
Video
The top navigation bar is cluttered and the extra hamburger menu clashes with the bottom navigation tabs. There is no need for two navigation systems within an app.
Navigation
The wallet can only be changed and added in the "Profile" page which is hidden in the top menu. Making users take extra steps wastes their time and loses user retention.
Wallet
The "Video Claim" tab is the only page where users can cash out from the app. This is confusing because the feature is integrated into a completely different part of the app. The user's wallet should be more accessible in the app.
Withdraw
The "History" page is also hidden away in the top menu bar. This is an important page users need to find since it shows the status of their payment withdrawal and ways they've used their in-app currency. This page needs to be more prominent in the navigation.
History
The "Leaderboard" should be replaced with the "Profile" section because users need to visit their wallet, payment status, account details, and personal ranking more than see a display of stats. The leaderboard needs to serve some function and a call-to-action. This would also be a place to explore the various levels, statuses, badges, achievements, and other reward systems.
Ranking
I identified the functions and pages that need to be more prominent in the app (earning and withdrawing cryptocurrencies), and the irrelevant ones to be left out (that users never see or look for). With the goals in mind, I started creating wireframes of the MVP screens, making the navigation clear and easy to complete tasks, withdraw earnings, and track their progress. ​
With the understanding of these interactions and user flows, I built out wireframes in Sketch:
Designs
After building the layouts of the screens, I started filling in the UI components (colours, fonts, styling components) and features to add to help gamify the experience (splashes of colour, animations, micro-interactions). I added various affordances to make earning more intuitive and easily accessible, enhanced with bursts of rewards, coins, and celebratory icons throughout the “Storm Player” screens. While creating these mockups, I uploaded them InVision to test a working prototype throughout the design process. Testing the prototype on a device significantly helped me identify which designs fulfilled my intent and didn't.
Prototype
Iterations
I synced with engineers and business side to make sure I stayed on the right track (business) and to make sure we have the resources to build (tech). ​
After deciding on the final screens of the MVP, my next step was to work our front-end Android developer (working remotely in Brazil) to make sure all the assets and the right design details were being passed on. I made sure to document and redline all the visual components, as well as the design decisions and rationale behind each screen as we synced over Slack.
Results
After implementing design changes to several functions and screens, we've brought the user base back up to and been steadily maintaining a user base of 300,000 monthly active users, and tackling more of the support tickets to keep our users at the core of our experience design. Our growth has been attracting more partners to advertise on our platform which in turn has been helping build revenue for the company.
Reflection
​When you have a time crunch with a release date weeks from being assigned the project, there isn’t much time to lay out a long process of extensive research: going out to interview individuals, taking the time to ask all your connections to fill out surveys, collecting user feedback. It was challenging to quickly find the most effective ways to make justified decisions based on the research you have, and accounting for the different types of users you are trying to reach, but the fast pace pushed me to set priorities and scrap the “fluff” in order to discover what truly matters to our users.
My ultimate goal for Storm Play was to release an MVP that would effectively help users earn. Next time, I would love to work with more data and user-acquisition professionals (who are setting up the environment for our app since there was no previous collection of data) to explore better A/B testing tools and analytics.
Overall, this dynamic crypto journey has been a funnel for me to explore, broaden, and grow a greater appreciation for blockchain.