Soda Caps & Onboarding
Designed and launched in 2021
In 2021 I was part of a team that set out to improve one of the biggest features in the mobile game Candy Crush Soda Saga, that goes under the name Seasons.
Our goal was to introduce a standardised reward and structuring an onboarding that shows the player what to do in the right context.
Agenda
Purpose of the project.
Result and what we accomplished.
Approach of how I worked
Visuals of what I delivered.
Purpose of the project
The purpose was to improve the engagement and the understandability of the feature called Seasons. This feature had been out in the game and the participation rate had slowly started to decline. Our ambition was to change this direction and have it trend upwards rather than downwards
Direction of improvements
When I joined the project I had a clear ambition of introducing an onboarding of how you play. This was something I felt was crucial for the feature and argumented strongly for since this was missing.
To convey clarity, I vouched for us to create a more consistent design. A specific part of the design that I changed was the Seasons Token that players got after completing tasks. This token kept changing as the theme of the feature updated every third week, with this project we standardised it and the Season Token is now referred as a reward that the players understand.
Result and what we accomplished
The onboarding did become a permanently experience that is helping players. There's also an additional information screen that players can access at any time if there's any functionality they wonder about. For example, the Soda Cap or Season Token is described there.
Creating consistency is something I aim towards, in order to create a unified experience. This project is a great example of where consistency was needed to create clarity.
Setting the standard
This project did set a new standard for how future onboarding experiences will be designed in the game. I wrote specific documentation for the onboarding design, which allows future projects to follow the same principles and flow. This documentation is also supporting the goal of creating a more consistent experience in the whole game.
Approach of how I worked
I had a clear focus that the player experience should be all about doing rather than watching and reading the information.
Complete the action
The core problem I wanted to solve was the engagement of the feature was decreasing. With the new onboarding, I focused on making the players go through the loop of completing the action needed to progress.
Recognition rather than recall
Designing the Season Token, Soda Cap, made a big difference. Especially since it also was introduced as a key part of the onboarding. Players have in research later been able to describe exactly what to do and the importance of Soda Caps to progress.
Visuals of what I delivered
There were a bunch of things created for this project, I can't publicly share all of it but here's a selection of things I made.
The full flow of the onboarding in the feature Seasons.
The information button and the information it provides.