Yumi Gaming

The video game industry is constantly evolving and has made strides toward establishing more subscription based services. Even though many of these services are not yet household names, companies are looking to improve their offerings and services to entice players to change their way of looking at playing games.

I created Yumi Gaming, a video game community and store that focuses on creating a safe, supportive space for women in the video game industry. For this project, I'm assuming that the platform established itself two years ago and has been well received by users.

Problem

Yumi Gaming has built a healthy base of free users and now wants to evolve its features so they can monetize on a premium subscription. They want to design a paid experience with better features that entices users to upgrade.

According to the project brief, the main business goals of Yumi Gaming are to create an opportunity for new users to subscribe in the sign-up flow and for returning users to subscribe during sign-in or within the product. My project will delve into the video game subscription usage of my users and explore if the business goals are the best way to present the service to them.

Results

Designed Yumi Premium, a flexible subscription service that offers unlimited access to the Yumi Gaming library. The subscription offers special perks to users such as discounts on game ownership, exclusive releases, and game bonuses. It also features the unique feature of being able to be paused and restarted at anytime, allowing the user full control depending on their gaming schedule.

Empathize

Competitive Analysis

To start off my research, I wanted to first take a look at other companies to get a better idea of what is already existing in the industry.  A main insight I gathered from this analysis is that companies tend to focus first on offering the free plan and introduce the benefits of a premium subscription with multiple entry points throughout the app. Therefore, I advised that the project solution not include subscription mention in the sign-up/sign-in process of the experience since this creates a barrier to entry to the app.

• Direct Subscription Competition: Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus
  Learned it is best to create a subscription plan that is easily understood and with a consistent style. Also, dark mode with clear cards and symbols are common in the industry.

• Direct Store Competition: Steam, Epic Games
  Understood the importance of clear UI and CTA that don't compete for attention, especially on a desktop app where there could be more space.

• Indirect Subscription Competition: Spotify, Pandora
  From the successful music subscriptions, learned the importance of focusing on the free plan offerings at first to gain users. In this way, the value of the premium plan can be slowly offered and shown throughout the experience.

Direct Competition Subscription

Direct Competition
Store

Indirect Competition
Music

User Interviews

To better understand the current video game subscription experiences of users, I conducted user interviews with individuals selected through a screener survey. I chose users who have used video game subscription services and ensured there was a mix of men and women, so that I could get different perspectives.

Affinity Map

After reviewing the interviews, I pulled the most relevant user statements and used them to create a Google Sheets affinity map to help me organize the data. I coded the statements into categories and used those groupings to create overarching synthesis points. For each point, I analyzed the importance to the scope of the project and narrowed down my findings into three main insights.

Main Insights:

• Users want freedom of choice with little risk: With subscriptions, users are often wary about joining because of the initial investment and commitment required. This is an issue for gaming in particular since many games can take a long time to complete. Users are worried about getting too involved in a game and be forced to continue subscribing to a plan that is difficult to end or adjust later.
  

• Users look for a flexible plan that provides value: Subscriptions typically require monthly payments and continuous plan coverage, but this doesn't always provide the best option for gamers. Depending on their lives and gaming moods, users go through different phases of gaming. Therefore, gamers feel the need to justify the amount of money they spend, either through amount of time played, level of enjoyment, or variety of content.

• Users appreciate their community to keep them involved in a game: In the gaming industry, console games are dominated by paid services that are required to be able to use multiplayer. This type of payment is usually done begrudgingly since users see it as the only way to make use of this multiplayer service. Despite users disliking this type of service, this shows the importance of the social aspect of gaming. A strong community, either developed through a game or through a friend base, can keep users continuously subscribed to a specific service.

Define

Now that I had my main insights, I decided to take a step back and analyze them in relation to the problem. Even though the user's community is important, for the scope of this project, I decided I would need to keep the focus on the insights more directly related to the subscription plan: the user's freedom of choice and value of plan. With these in mind, I formed a how might we statement that I used as the main focus for the project.

How might we offer value to the user so they feel justified in paying to subscribe.

Ideate

Since I formulated for the main question for the project, I next started ideation with a brainwriting activity. I wrote down any ideas that came to mind based around the HMW question so I could start figuring out the direction of my design.

User Flow

With these ideas starting to form the framework of the subscription plan, I further expanded upon my thinking by creating user flows to look at the path the user would take to complete a subscription purchase. After many iterations, I chose a user flow that would serve as the starting point for my wireframes.

Wireframes

After fleshing out my user flow, I started ideation on the layout of my main screens. I started with a few quick paper sketches, then moved to Figma to start building the wireframes. Within Figma, I was able to make adjustments and iterations until I settled on a design that I wanted to test.

Homepage ->
Game Trial

Trial Finished ->
Subscription Purchase

Low Fidelity Prototype & Testing

Next, I used Figma to create a clickable prototype of my wireframes to test with users. I conducted remote usability sessions to test for the overall usability of the layouts and flows of the design. I also paid special attention to test for comprehension of the subscription plan to see if the design allowed for users to understand the offerings.

Adding Fidelity & Changes

Yumi Gaming Branding

Yumi Gaming strives to be an inclusive community, focused on creating a welcoming and encouraging space for women in games.

The name Yumi is a Japanese and Korean word which means beauty and friend. The way it is pronounced is also a play on “You & Me,” furthering the idea of working together to create a beautiful community. Another interpretation of the word Yumi is “arrow” which is represented in the logo. It represents how Yumi wants to move the gaming industry forward and create a more welcoming community for all types of gamers.

Style Guide

• Color: The colors of Yumi didn't stray far from its video game roots with an overall dark theme that is common in the industry. However, the brand colors take a more pastel look to give it a softer edge, with the blue, pink, and purple being inspired by colors used by popular women streamers.

• Fonts: To keep the content simple and modern, both fonts are sans serif. This helps to keep the text easy to read, especially for the body text, Karla. For the headers, the geometric font Now was chosen to bring a little more playfulness into the design.
  

Changes for High-Fidelity Prototype

After testing, I found that users were able to understand the flow of the design, but had difficulties when it came to comprehension of subscription offerings. For my high-fidelity changes, I focused on clarifying my free vs. paid offerings and simplifying the presentation of the plans.

Changes Made:

• Homepage Simplification - During testing, I discovered that users had confusion over the purpose of the homepage and didn't understand the subscription offering. On the page, I had included aspects such as the game price that should be reserved for the store. In my iteration, I decided to focus the homepage with the purpose of getting the user back to playing their games faster. I made returning to played games the most prominent and included lots of recommendations of trial games to play. This also allowed me to better feature the subscription by showing off available games for the service.

• Subscription Page Clarification - Another pain point in understanding was the subscription page itself. Users were confused about the plans, thinking that they were separate services, not just a discounted version. Some also did not realize that the perks of the plan were lower on the page, with some wondering why they would sign-up without knowing those details first. On the iteration, I focused on showcasing the value of the plan with clear CTA to lead the user to learn more. I also changed the name from Yumi Play to Yumi Premium to bring it more in line with the industry, allowing the user for easier recognition of what it has to offer.

• Game Detail - Users were able to easily navigate this page during testing, so I decided this would be a good point to introduce another touch point for the premium plan. I decided to still keep the trial as the most prominent CTA, but mention the Yumi Premium plan as an option of play so that the user becomes more aware of its existence.

High-Fidelity Prototype & Testing

Now with my new iteration in high-fidelity, I used Figma to create a clickable prototype to test in remote usability sessions. Overall, I discovered that the subscription plan comprehension completely improved in these test sessions. Users became aware of the premium plan as early as the homepage and showed a greater interest in joining. With this extra enthusiasm, I uncovered a new issue where users felt like they weren't being offered the option to subscribe fast enough after playing a trial. I was happy to focus my next iteration on this since this indicated that users were becoming aware of the service faster and were inclined to join.

Changes Made:

• Expedited Subscribing After Trial - After users were finished with the trial, at first I presented them with two options: to learn more about the premium service and to purchase the game. After testing, I found that users were more interested in subscribing directly from the page since they previously read about the service and the cost makes it such a low barrier to entry. I redesigned the end page to keep it simple and just include the Premium options, with direct purchasing available. I also incorporated Apple Pay and PayPal options to create an even faster experience.

• Homepage Details - During the high-fidelity tests, users were more clear about the purpose of the homepage with its focus on recommendations. However, users did express curiosity if there could be more categories and listings since the prototype was limited in the amount of titles it could show. I created an iteration with "see all" options and created more categories such as trending and specific genres to add variety to the offerings. I also added "Premium" to the side navigation to make it a more permanent part of the homepage.

Solution

By the end of this project, I successfully created a high-fidelity prototype for Yumi Premium, a subscription service that gives users the flexibility to chose when to use it. Even though the business goals at the beginning were to create subscription points at the sign-up/sign-in, I found through my research that the design would better be focused on creating many touchpoints throughout the app, so as not to limit the users on entry.

To measure success, I would compare the conversion of free to paid users of my designs versus the sign-up/sign-in subscription point model. In this way, even though the method is different, if the conversion of users is higher with my design, the business will consider it to be successful.

Now, I decided to take a look back at my HMW question and see how I was able to answer it in the design.

How might we offer value to the user so they feel justified in paying to subscribe.

To answer the question, I was first able to establish a valuable free version of the app, with access to trial versions of games. With these trials, users became invested in playing and were more willing to subscribe to continue. To ensure that the user felt justified in paying for the premium plan, I included lots of benefits, such as game discounts, exclusive access, and in-game bonuses.

With the starting price of $1, there was such a low barrier to entry that users saw no problem in giving the premium service a try. I also wanted to make sure the user felt like they had the freedom in the experience by allowing them to cancel or pause the plan at anytime, allowing for flexibility to work around any gaming style.

Next Steps

Future Recommendations

Although this project is finished, I feel like there would be plenty of room to make improvements on the Yumi Gaming experience for the future. I would love to see the evolution of the platform and see how it would be beyond what the scope of this experience.

• Community - I would love to expand upon the community aspect of Yumi Gaming since it is the basis for which I created the platform. As a woman gamer myself, I feel like there is a need for a safe, inclusive space for women gamers as they are usually underrepresented in the industry. I imagine Yumi as a platform to allow women gamers to connect and support each other while playing the games that they love.

• Subscriber Experience - One thing that many users mentioned in my high-fidelity round of testing was that they were interested to see how the app would change after subscribing to Yumi Premium. They said that this experience allowed them to see what it would be like as a free user who was converting, but they were interested to see how it would look now that they joined. A future project could be to design a subscriber experience that keeps the users coming back for more.

Final Thoughts

I truly had a wonderful experience working on this project as it was a subject that I am passionate about myself. It was fascinating to analyze the video game experience from a subscriber point of view as I feel like it is something that the industry is trying to move towards, but hasn't fully accepted yet. I look forward to watching how the video game industry will evolve and what new experiences will come in the future!