Word Strength
Words with Friends
Expanding the forever brand, there was growth opportunity to work with Facebook's Instant Games platform to create a lightweight version of the native application. The Instant Games platform was new, tapping into turn based games. We wanted to take advantage of the technology and build something that would reach a broader audience.
To try and solve the challenge of the younger international audience, I explored non intrusive First Time Player Experiences, integrating different ways of playing the standard game with Video Chat, and tapping into features like Streaks that are prevalent on mobile apps.
Overview
Facebook introduced rewarded video ads into their instant games platform to help developers maintain player engagement. We wanted to build rewarded videos into our game that didn't disrupt the play session, but would appear at player decision points. An opt-in model was central to our strategy, focusing on a compelling and valuable need that players felt was worth their time.
Deciding on which power ups to reward, we had to look at the play behavior of both our U.S. and International players:
• Strategy: Competition to get the highest scoring word possible
• Aspiration: An intrinsic value allowing players feel like they are getting better
• Learning: Discovering new words players may not have known otherwise
Challenge
How to create more deep social engagement that leads to high retention and virality.
Approach
Test out the Rewarded Video ad format, where players opt in to watch an advert for in game currency.
Impact
2x increase in multiple game creations
3x boost in time spent on one game per session
90% Ad completion rate due to user opt-in vs. forced.
Research
During this stage, I wanted to understand our players' motivations and everyday usage of our game. I also wanted to tap into our target audience to better understand what appeals to them.
Goal Acceptance Criteria
How are they playing the game?
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How often are they using the match-making feature? (highly engaged players)
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What long are they playing and how often are they starting new matches?
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What are our player’s biggest frustrations with the feature?
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Understand user needs in the game's lightweight model, and to identify improvements
Competitive Analysis
Looking at other competitors, I can break down what other direct and indirect competitors are doing right and what could be done better.
Some key findings and takeaways were:
Players didn't want to feel like their privacy was being sacrificed for a social layer of the game. They didn't want to be put into a group conversation via Facebook Messenger with strangers.
Find the progression for the player journey. For the post D7 retention, players yearn for unlocked content, or a clear progression.
Integration of ads, don't interrupt core game play. Player's time is important, and in these lightweight games, they expect robust play.
Define
The needs and frustrations of our players, while being live, has its positives and negatives. We get the live data to formulate some hypothesis, but the timing to react is always a challenge. I needed to do some research to understand why our players engaged with the feature the way they did.
Define
Goals
Based off of interviews and research, I put together the main goals from the business side and user standpoints. This helped to visualize what goals overlapped and satisfied both sets of goals.
Next Steps
Integrate a reward that players receive after watching a Rewarded Video. We want to take advantage of Facebook premium ads, which are uninterrupted and cannot be skipped. Offering a strategic layer that creates a need state for players, can ensure that viewership has a high completion rate. First, we want to take learnings from the Worlds with Friends native team to see what rewarded boosts were highly engaged with, and why players use them.
Further Insight
Word Strength in the Words with Friends native app is a highly engaged with power boost. Power boosts are level gated, and can be activated through in-game currency that can be purchased or obtained through achievements. The way that it works, is once activated through enough in-game currency, when a player strings a correct word, the standard green lightning bolt appears. It is only when the player taps on the word or indicator, that the game communicates the strength of the word.
The Solution
I wanted to align on three key objectives, encourage continued play through a second chance mechanic that applies to all current and new games created, minimize friction after players view rewarded videos to gain player trust, and communicate the value and strategic benefit. Since the landscape and audience is different from the native app to Facebook's messaging platform, there was higher risk engagement with players being able to abandon games more frequently. Every interaction had to reinforce value since there was very little margin for error, making it absolutely critical to surface Word Strength differently.
Information Architecture
Since our approach is to create a need state when players are stumped, the main focus is how best do we allow players to discover its benefits. We explored how much we wanted to advertise Word Strength or focus on discoverability and create opportunity when needing assistance. Working with product and analyzing player behaviors, we wanted to keep low friction and barriers of entry to reach gameplay faster. This ensured that when we introduce an interruption, that it occurred at a meaningful and high needs moment.
Design Direction
Discoverability Improvements
The Word Strength meter needed to be a persistent object that when inactive, doesn't affect the game board's main functionality. I explored various locations on the main game board, how we portray inactive vs activated states, and how we future proof expanding to other power boosts.
Meter interactions and visual treatment of gauge
Meter behavior and visual indicators ideas
Intro to feature, reward animation
Meter location in tile tray area
Meter location in player/opponent area
Opportunity
The discoverability is a main pillar of the design. The icon, sitting above the tile game board fits well, and can be easily scanned while not distracting gameplay. It has the full width to expand the meter, fitting in various scalable browser windows. Its location is in a reliable and consistently scannable region of the screen. I wanted the entry point for Word Strength to be efficient, and integrate it with the meter so that we're teaching players its in a reliable location.
Design Iterations
Utility Shift
While the power up was anchored above the game board for high visibility, its value- understanding how strong a player's word is was disconnected to the actual core interaction of building a word. That was clearly identified when allowing internal teams play with the prototypes. After this feedback, I iterated on how it felt to detach the power up entry point and contextual information from the Word Strength power meter.
Key Changes
Moving the strength meter closest to the game tiles wasn't top of my list in regard to placement, because it posed some edge cases that would interfere with the general functionality of the main interaction. But by only using the strength meter as a non interactive visualization, it covered the concerns I had from a usability standpoint. What these changes included were:
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Ensure that Words Strength entry point was still highly visible at the top of the game board. We have more flexibility now that the meter is detached, to incorporate iconography, time left.
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Utilizing the space in the empty space housing the tile letters left, allows us some room to play around with how we animate World Strength activation. We keep this space strictly non-interactive to avoid undesired taps.
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Utilize the Word Strength iconography and create animations to confirm boost was awarded and activated.
Next Steps
Results & Next Steps
Increase in Game Creates
Video Completion Rates
Time Boost Spent
Conclusion
The Word Strength design on the Facebook Games platform proved successful enough that its implementation was adopted by the Words with Friends native version of their Word Strength. Even though the Facebook Games and native experiences were designed for two different platforms and audiences, the alignment of Word Strength's implementation established greater parity and contributed to a more cohesive cross platform experience. The adoption also extended into the rewarded video technology, creating further alignment with both products. By introducing monetization at contextual moments of player need, the team created additional opportunities to sustain engagement with more of a seamless experience.
Native App Adoption
Next Steps
The original intent was to tie Word Strength through the Watch to Earn video rewarding flow. But we decided to allow coin sinks to activate power boosts to give player agency and balance the game's economy. Coins are earned as in-game currency that players receive through milestone rewards, which we've established as having long term value. Allowing our players to decide how to activate boosts can be a rewarding experience, and we want to design for different play styles.
Word Strength's performance validated the contextual discovery approach and established player trust through rewarded game boosts and its deployability. This gave us confidence to roll out with the next set of power boosts and have them level gated so that players are incentivized to unlock more as they keep progressing.
