Mobile Gaming · Social Casino · Feature Design · Wonka Slots
Research-Backing a New Feature for 10M+ Social Casino Players.
Before any production code was written, a research sprint with VIP slot players surfaced a critical retention risk and reshaped the product roadmap. Designing engagement for products people use habitually is the same challenge whether it is a slot game or an enterprise tool. My approach is simple: research first, assumptions second, never the other way around.
Project Overview
Players spin to collect gems, build items in an extravaganza room, and unlock milestone rewards, a builder meta layered over the core slot loop.
At a scale of 10M+ players, a feature that fails to retain does not fail quietly. It costs months of engineering effort and weakens trust in product decisions.
It is the same fundamental question every product team faces when adding complexity to a system that already works.
Problem:
The challenge was not how to build it, but whether it should be built at all, and what shape it needed to take to keep players engaged beyond the first session.
Validate whether the feature should exist at all and, if so, shape it in a way that meaningfully increases engagement and retention.
My role:
Leading UX designer research, player experience, feature design for Build your dreams.
Responsibilities:
conducting research,
Cross functional collaboration,
paper and digital wireframing,
iterating on designs,
making high-fidelity prototype
Outcome
ARPU Uplift Target
Based on comparable builder features in slot titles
Coin Sink Target
+10%
Additional gem spend driven by builder engagement
Event Duration
7–14d
Reskinnable event structure per season
Desk Research & Competitive Analysis.
Before opening Figma, we ran a structured competitive benchmark across 10+ titles, mapping mechanics, monetisation strategies, and failure patterns across social casino and casual builder games.
One insight stood out from Gardenscapes and Merge Mansion: permanent housing systems create content debt and player boredom at scale.
Based on this, we designed Build Your Dreams as a reskinnable seasonal event, keeping the experience fresh while avoiding long term content maintenance that other studios only discovered after launch.
Quadrant Analysis - Customisation vs Retention
Who We Were Designing For.
This was not a demographic profile but a behavioural one. VIP slot players represent a distinct user type: high frequency, high spend, and low patience for complexity. Designing for them means designing for someone who already knows what they enjoy. Every UX decision was therefore evaluated against this behaviour profile.
Designing the Core Loop
Flow Chart
Core loop flow from spin through gem collection, building, milestones and room completion.
Lo-Fi Wireframe of main screen
Based on all the research in the ideation phase through iterations we had finalized the following layout and options to run through the customer testing. Here is the Figma link to try out the entire prototype. These wireframes were made in high fidelity for the sake of customer testing to under the feature better.
Prototype Link
I began with drawing storyboards to focus on just the most important parts of a user’s experience with the app. It's a story that was told through the panels revealed their frustrations.
Survey Questions
A selected group VIP players based on their activities in the game was chosen for the play test
session. We had prepared set of questionnaire based on the prototype.
This exercise helped us to understand over all interest of the players to be active in this event as a slot player. How likely are they to participate in the event.
Evaluate
With this exercise being part of production process this was extremely helpful to understand what is the overall player’s interest to play this event and some of the improvisations that can be adapted in the game.
Overall Interests
All players are open to trying the Build Your Dreams feature if it were added to Wonka Slots.
Interest is primarily driven by the idea of a new and novel feature. This is enough for players to try the feature but is not indicative of retention or attachment.
Navigation and Understanding
The feature UI is mostly intuitive and players are able to easily navigate the feature.
However, there is a need for more clarity in the FTUE copy and progress bar design.
Rewards
Milestone rewards are somewhat appealing. However, players care more about the value of the rewards than the format in which they receive them.
Sense of Control
Players also appreciate the choice of which task to complete, and there is an opportunity to add a strategic layer by making the two tasks worth different gem amounts/more progress.
Outcome
Player Interest
100%
VIP players open to trying the feature, business case validated
Customisation Sweet Spot
3
Options confirmed as optimal choice architecture
Research Dimensions
5
Interest · Navigation · Rewards · Control · Retention
What I'd do differently
Recruit a wider behavioural spread
VIP players are hard to recruit in volume. The findings were directionally clear but I'd have tested with a broader cohort to stress-test the retention hypothesis before handing the brief to engineering.
Separate retention from usability sessions
Running both in one session was efficient but limited depth, a separate usability pass would have strengthened confidence in the details.