Zynga Poker

A Social Poker Mobile Game

Role
Principal Designer

Team
Pods, teams of 5 - 8

Responsibility
Feature Development, Mentorship

I joined Zynga Poker during its transition from native iOS to Unity. During this time, I learned a great deal about workflow optimization and took on various features, both large and small, from conception to completion. Some features were primarily driven by Product Managers, while others were led by Designers. Here are a few highlights.

FEATURES HIGHLIGHT

POKER LEAGUES

Competition drives engagement and excitement. Scarcity, Exclusivity and Prestigious create competition.

A League system was introduced to Poker to promote higher user engagement. We measured user engagement by the number of hands played and that usually painted an accurate picture of how well player engages with the game. Naturally, competitive players are driven to climb to the top because of exclusivity and the prestige status one could get by reaching the top. The higher the league, the more fierce the competition becomes and players who are highly engaged are much more likely to spend to remain in the competition.

Usually features begin with a simple question: As a user, what would I like to experience?

The product owner of Leagues used this approach to shape the parameters of the feature. Designers, product, PM and engineers gathered in a room and brainstormed on the stories and the corresponding design requirements.

I then study the design requirements and map out the keywords into columns, in attempt to group similar things together. By doing so, we effectively organized the feature into categories and framework that the user will interface with. These categories eventually became screens with elements derived from the columns.

Poker Leagues Impact

Poker Leagues was a successful addition to the game. It massively drove every KPI we are measuring.

  • Retention increased

  • Session play increased

  • Number of hands played increased

  • ARPDAU increased

To build on our success, we will continue to enhance competitions by adding an exclusive top tier, offering more appealing prizes, and introducing more limited-time events.

POKER CHALLENGES

Every game needs an objective. Without objectives, players will not be motivated to progress. Poker Challenges are designed to retain users by providing precisely tuned objectives (Challenges) for players to complete. Upon completion, players are rewarded for their efforts and are provided with a next set of Challenges.

POKER CHALLENGES IMPACT

Poker Challenges are designed for players who seek the thrill of completing micro-objectives, and the results have been positive.

There has been a noticeable increase in retention across all timeframes: 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, and 30 days. Additionally, the number of hands played has also increased.

However, there has been little movement in the Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU). The theory is that we may be giving out too many prizes, which leads players to feel less inclined to spend. Fortunately, these issues are easily adjustable; we can increase the effort required to earn rewards or reduce the amount offered.

VIP CENTER REFRESH

Every casino has an exclusive VIP club. It’s an essential experience to be invited into the VIP club because of the contribution you made. The VIP Program in Zynga Poker provides additional purchasing perks and personalized customer support for Poker VIPs.

The feature refresh stems from the need to:

  • introduce new VIP tiers

  • improve UI so the perks are more spelled out for our VIPs

Logo

VIP CENTER REFRESH

Every casino has an exclusive VIP club. It’s an essential experience to be invited into the VIP club because of the contribution you made. The VIP Program in Zynga Poker provides additional purchasing perks and personalized customer support for Poker VIPs.

The feature refresh stems from the need to:

  • introduce new VIP tiers

  • improve UI so the perks are more spelled out for our VIPs

PURCHASE STORE

The old buypage deserves some updated love. The old design is visually bland and not exciting. It leaves no room for additional content to be added.

ISSUES

  • Vertical scrolling in a landscape orientation doesn't give much space to display bigger art.

  • The button to switch to the Gold page is quite hidden and many people complain to CS on how to purchase Gold.

  • Every package wants to be highlighted, there's only a few "highlighter" visuals we can add to a narrow row without causing too much distraction.

  • Tap area on each card is bunched up together closely, fat finger issues were common.

Logo

NEW DESIGN

  • Uses horizontal scrolling to match the horizontal orientation - a more natural scrolling experience.

  • Combines the navigation tab to display wallet amount for space saving

  • Nav tabs created more opportunities for Special promotion by having its own tab page.

  • enlarged cards for each chip and gold packages, more space to add "highlighter" visuals to callout a certain card.

  • Bigger art can be used in each card

  • Bigger tap area for each card

STYLE GUIDE

Without visual guides, Zynga Poker would be visually inconsistent. Our team had made many efforts in unifying our visual language.