Project Type
Full-Time Job
My Role
User Research & Task Management
Group Members
PM (1), Designers (3), Developers(4), UX Writer(1)
Timeline
Nov 2021-June 2022
Who We Are
<Dr. Panda Town> is a kids' educational game that contains 40 exciting locations to play in. Kids can play as police officers, bakers, and even aliens in-game and explore or interact with different roles to enjoy an entirely new world without stepping out of their room. <Dr. Panda Town> is also the most popular game under Dr.Panda Brand, and it currently has abundant users worldwide, especially in North America.
The Problem
The game Dr. Panda town's customer group grew fast due to the increasing demand for online educational games during the pandemic in 2020. However, a few months of sales decreasing and subscriptions losing after Oct 2020 made us notice that it's time to understand our user base again. Working in the product team, I was responsible for digging the user insights and discovering new features that users desired.
The Solution
Lead user research through competitor research, survey, and interviews to define user pain points and coordinate current resources within different teams to launch the new features before the 3rd quarter.
The Importance of Time
After understanding the goal, I discussed with the product manager about the most important thing: Time. As a major initiative to support reaching the business target of 2021, the significant new features must be ready before the coming summer of 2021, which is the most critical sales time for us. As a researcher of the new feature development stage, I stand at the beginning of the journey to define the user stories. The timely prediction has become key in ensuring we complete the task as planned. To effectively plan the research, I had to take action very fast.
Research Methodologies
In order to find out why users are leaving, I decided to generate competitive analyses, user interviews, and surveys, to see what are our consumers really want and need from the Dr. Panda Town app.
01. Competitive Analysis
At the beginning of the research stage, I decided to dig into the current game market, especially our main competitors, to find out the most popular trends and what they are doing currently. I conducted a competitive analysis report and presented it in the team.
Based on the research, I found that our competitors were presenting:
More play freedoms in terms of more personalized opinions
Content for a broader age range
The analysis also gave me a brief vision of what the coming survey should focus on.
02. Public Survey
Taking the market trends as a starting point, curiosity about users’ needs, the product manager, and the engineering lead’s support, I wrote the survey with a UX writer. We also decide to use google survey as the platform, because it's easier to analyze the results with google analytics.
How do we encourage people to engage?
After we finalized the survey, with a $1000 budget, we decided to send the survey out through weekly email to our registered users. 5 of the participants will have the opportunity to win a $200 Amazon gift card in the lottery.
However, in the first batch of 200 emails we sent out, there are only 2 people took the survey. We did another test of 100 emails, the response rate is still only 2%.
Flexible strategy change
To gain more responses, after a short research, we fast changed our strategy to that every person who takes the survey will get a 5 dollar amazon gift card. Luckily, it works. the engagement rate boosted from 2% to 12%.
As a result, we successfully received 220+ survey responses in total. Although it exceeded the budget a LITTLE bit, the insights are worth it.
We get some really valuable data about our current user demographics and some general ideas of what our users are looking for.
According to the survey, we found that:
54% of people had deleted the app or canceled the subscription because they felt bored with the current scenes.
35% of participants are looking for more customization opinions.
Our largest user base still remains at 3-10 years old.
03. Interviews
With a general understanding of user desire, our team decided to conduct 8 interviews with the user( the kids) and their parents (who pay for the game) to refine our understanding.
The specify goal
Develop new functions that provide users with more customization options and flexibility on the map based on the current app structure.
As I mentioned, the research process didn't go smoothly; we faced several problems and even temporarily changed our strategy during the research. After realizing that the study was behind schedule, I engaged with our tech and UX teams in advance to discuss the product's current scope, possible upgrade directions, and the early preparation they could make at the time.
Fortunately, we caught the time perfectly. After rounds of serious conversations and discussions, the product team decided to develop the features of the editable map and one personalization house creator for the game to increase the playability of the game.
The Editable Map
Personalization options would not only be only applied to the characters but also to the map itself. Our team decided to let players edit their maps and reorganize different areas to make the brand concept of "Build your Own Town" more realistic. Compared to the old, fixed map, the new flexible and playable one allows users to move the buildings wherever they want. Children can build their community following their interests.
Home Creator
We also decide to leave some empty spaces for users to develop by themselves. Just like children can build their characters by picking their hair color, the home creator function lets children decorate their empty rooms by choosing their favorite wallpaper. Children don’t need to wait until the new areas are released but can create their own space every day.
Two Discarded ideas
Expand the Target Users’ Range
We also considered exploring more teenagers-related content to acquire users in a wider age range. However, considering the brand image and the characters' limitations, we also give up this idea for the current stage.
The Shareable Map
The idea of map sharing is also popular among users; interviewees show they want to play remotely with their friends on the same map. This function can highly increase the playable of the map. However, the work to achieve this goal is massive, especially for the tech team. It's impossible to launch and reach the plan for the coming summer; as a result, our team decided to save it for later discussion.
Work in the Agile Environment
The entire Dr.Panda Town product is managed under the scrum methodology. Since we tend to release two main features before the coming summer and keep developing new areas monthly simultaneously, the workload is complex and heavy. The scrum method played a significant role in pushing the tasks forward fluently. In weekly sprint meetings, we checked backlogs with multi-functional teams, prioritized the task by its emergency level, and engaged the required labor as early as possible to make the preparations. With effective agile team management, we successfully rolled out the new features in May and July.
After we launched these two new functions, from June to September 2021, subscriptions are up 16% compared to the same period one year before.
We successfully achieved the company’s annual goal and “The home creator” is still one of the most popular functions that Dr.Panda Town’s users love today.
The Gratifying Outcome
Lessons
Do The Research, Then Communicate
Working in an interdisciplinary environment is very interesting, while also challenging. It was my first time working with many different departments including the in-house tech team, the UX team, and the outside agencies. In order to communicate with different groups fluently, I needed to take extra time to research before I actually chatted with them. As long as I got basic background knowledge, the process would be easier.
First Experience Related to UX
By working in the product team, I had a lot of conversations with the UX designers about how our game was designed for the users. I first understood that User Experience Design is about generating an accessible and user-friendly platform. I also gained experience with UX Specific terms such as "information architectures" and "usability test". This project is also one of the reasons why I decided to target UX as a future career.
Consider questions from a big picture
Working in a product team is complex, especially since you need to manage multi-tasks with different teams. Under this situation, looking at the big picture will make task management more effective.
To reach the final goal, I engaged different teams in the earlier discussion and changed the research process strategy. Being flexible and making changes whenever necessary would be the key to success.
Never Put All Your Eggs Into One Basket
When the survey was ready, I tended to send the email to all the email addresses in our user system simultaneously. However, my supervisor stopped me, and she taught me always start with testing and then make the decision. The result is that the first method was inefficient, and we must switch our strategy. Taking this class as a warning, I will make the decision more carefully in the future.
