The info and nudge that 50% of PLAYR users needed to enter the giveaway they wanted.

Now known as Surf Giveaways, PLAYR had a massive audience of giveaway-goers. With a bustle of daily entries and interactions going, giveaway hosts raffled thousands of prizes for social engagement. They were looking for actions like follows on Twitter, subscriptions on Twitch, or responses to surveys. These legacy users were veterans, and new the product inside and out. However, we were reaching new regions and demographics every day. With moderated testing and interviews, we were able to discover unknown issues with first-time usability, and resolve them with improved content hierarchy and design.

Trust the process, find the problems

Our goal was to get a sense of new users’ trust in the platform, and their first impressions. Testing with ten users, we looked at both the usability of core user flows, and asked exploratory questions. Were users able to enter the giveaways they wanted? Did they see the content they were looking for?

We learned a lot, identifying key themes and sentiments, but our biggest surprise was that half of users either failed or had difficulty entering a giveaway on their first try. As well, critical information for users— regional restrictions, winners per prize, and age limits— was obscured in a collapsible “Details” section.

Trust the process, solve the problems

We remediated both of these issues by:

1. Improving the content hierarchy. We worked to surface key details based on our interviews. We designed a new layout, with content prioritized based on the quantitative and qualitative data we collected. The designs involved internal advocacy because they felt less flashy to stakeholders who’d grown attached to the less usable layout.
2. Adding a “nudge” interaction. An “Enter Giveaway” button above the fold worked to anchor a users viewport to the giveaway entry section. This quick fix solved the issue of discovery— it helped tell users where to enter.

We later designed a solution to signify how to enter. An improved visual design for giveaway entry methods could make each one look and feel more interactive. It took time to redesign 25+ unique entry methods and testing them in prototype form with users, but it was worth the effort. Based on our tests, the improvements will encourage even more entries and interactions: to the delight of all users, and to the health of the Surf Giveaways product. Giveaway entries are the primary actions that the product and its users rely on.

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