Today’s Top Picks

Daily themed crossword is a casual, free-to-play, crossword game. Launched in Jan 2018, it has garnered 10 million+ downloads and has a 600k+ DAU (and counting!) in both android and IOS platform

B A C K S T O R Y

How it all started?

It all started with when we launched 3rd “Today’s Puzzles”. The size of the puzzle is 13x13 (which usually take 5–8 mins) to complete.

Third Puzzle puzzle viewers are >60% across cohorts. But ever since we launched third daily puzzle, we observed that players are not engaging enough with other puzzle section.

And this is what prompted us to investigate the reasons behind it and develop a solution.

old vs new layout difference

What it is all about?

After the 3rd daily puzzle, engagement with the featured puzzle has decreased as players prioritise maintaining their streak by completing all daily puzzles.

“Today’s Top Picks” is a revamped and rebranded version of the “featured puzzle,” providing a fresh presentation of puzzles on the home screen.

This new design aims to enhance appeal and provide players with additional reasons to engage with puzzles beyond the daily ones.

chart showing the impact on other categories

P R I M A R Y Q U A L I T A T I V E R E S E A R C H

Target Users

Knowing our players

a) Data Insights

1. Engagement with the Featured Section on home screen is very low compared to third daily puzzle and further decays as the player ages.
2. Third Puzzle puzzle viewers are >60% across cohorts
3. Featured screen puzzle viewers are <25% across cohorts. This decays with increasing age of user from 23% for D1 to 15% for D360+

Analysing the homescreen section

b) Hypothesis

So why are players not interacting enough with this section of the home screen?

• These puzzle doesn’t look gratifying as the today’s puzzle as it has streak tied with it
• Also, featured puzzle looks disconnected from the set of puzzle. It is difficult for players to choose from the list of puzzle
• These puzzle does not gives the feel of daily freshness and are not free to play
• May be the term bonus archive, themed archive is not familiar or based on themed names to drive excitement
• This can be attributed to the section looking dull and weak motivation to play these puzzles.

#BEHAVIOURAL INSIGHT

It could be tiring for players to complete 2 daily puzzle which is 13x13 size and 1 mini. So, players might need a break at this point. There might be no motivation such as streak or reward for players to play

c) Solutioning

Through insights from users like SUSAN, who enjoy themed puzzles and eagerly anticipate our daily puzzles and packs, we aimed to devise a solution that boosts puzzle engagement without disrupting the “Today puzzle”.

d) Brainstorming and Exploration

Keeping in mind our target audience, casual word game players, we focussed on similar games when looking for references. We mainly tried to look at how these game shows different types of puzzle in their home screen.

References from competitors games

Some More Exploration

I explored various designs for the new section and puzzle tile appearance, placing several mockups to evaluate the visual hierarchy relative to other sections.

Layout exploration with pros and cons

Final Design

Here are some UX methodologies I applied in my design to ensure we meet our objectives:

Final design — showing the applied UX principles

Key Metrics

Metrics are used as an example of real metrics x% to show the outcomes

All the love we recieved

Shout out to my amazing team, PMs, Game Artists who worked along with me to make it a successful feature.🥳🥳

PS : This layout worked out so well that we introduced “expert puzzle” and few other categories in the similar way ⭐️