Keep the Cash
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FanDuel
Keep the Cash was a free-to-play game I worked on in parallel with FanDuel's Sportsbook.
The primary focus of 'Keep the Cash' was to allow user's to select from a number of daily yes/no questions related to a sporting event like the Superbowl, allocate funds from a starting pot of $1,000,000 on each question, and once the event relative to that question had concluded, take whatever funds they had remaining to the next round. If a user made it to the end of 20 rounds with any funds remaining, it was theirs to keep.
The Problem
The idea for FanDuel's 'Keep the Cash' project came from a previously run free to play game based on a similar concept. Some of the key differentiators and selling points of 'Keep the Cash' were the additional requirements added to the project, such as user's being able to edit their cash allocation on a question once it was locked in, view their question history, and re-enter if they ran out of funds before getting to the end of the 20 questions.
Early wireframes to help define the user flow
The Goal
The primary goal of this project was to offer existing users a product experience that simplified what a traditional betting experience looked like, alleviated any risk of user funds being lost if unsuccessful, and to act as an acquisition tool for customers new to the world of sports betting.
We also did not want not to completely re-imagine the concept as the previous iteration had proved the core offering was sound. However, due to a variety of constraints, the original offering lacked a number of key features users sought, and had a number of painpoints that needed to be addressed.
Lo-fidelity interactions for question locking
Research
To find out the users pain points we carried out multiple user testing sessions. During usability testing I sat down alongside our UX Researcher, who spoke directly with users and got them to perform tasks on low fidelity mock ups of early 'Keep the cash' concepts and talk us through how they felt, as well as their expectations about the game.
This also allowed us to speak in-depth with users about the experiences and frustrations that they had during this testing. It was through this testing that key usability issues were discovered around user's understanding of the game, onboarding, and how allocating funds across questions worked. It became immediately clear to us that for 'Keep the cash' to be a success, these issues would need to be addressed.
The app needed to be fully responsive despite a primarily mobile oriented user base
Design
Spending time using and understanding the previous incarnation of this application was crucial in understanding and empathising with user pain points. I was also fortunate enough to have analytics I could use to better inform my design decisions, such as key drop off points, average number of questions answered, number of returning users, successful question types and more.
Utilising this, I began by sketching up user journeys and potential solutions to the usability issues identified. When I was finally happy with the updated solutions, I translated our low fidelity mockups into high fidelity screens for both web and native devices.
Final mobile screens included onboarding and gamification states
Challenges
Some of the key challenges throughout the course of this project were developing an onboarding flow and educating the users on how to play the game, as well as designing certain UI components, such as the Yes/No question slider, given a user's traditional understanding of how sliders work, to be as intuitive as possible in the context of the game.
Other challenges of note centered around tight deadlines, and understanding both the technology and technical limitations of how the game would be built given the timeframe and third party involvement.
Final game win state detailed funds users could use on the full sportsbook app
Results
Once released, we saw that users found the experience markedly smoother and easier to use. Several rounds of pre and post launch testing informed us that the new offering drastically improved on the previously identified painpoints
This resulted in exceeding our established success metrics, such as number of registrations, number of questions answered, returning users, and first time bettors on the full sportsbook product once their time with the game had concluded.
