Adding a Feature
Designing a Live NYT Games Feature for a More Engaging User Experience
Every day, I start and end my day with a brain game: Wordle in the morning, and Spelling Bee at night. With every game, I’m secretly thinking “I need to solve this puzzle in less guesses than my friends”, or “I need to find more words and earn more points than my boyfriend”.
These games have grown extremely popular since the Wordle release in 2022, but The New York Times Games has actually been around since 2014 when they started the Mini Crossword.
Before Wordle, NYT Games primarily focused on the individual player experience and games focused on individual problem-solving– not competition or social interaction. And that’s exactly what people want.
My role
UX Designer
Timeline
2 weeks; 75 hours
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Miro, Maze, Adobe Illustrator
The Gap: NYT Games Users Crave More Competition
In a survey with 27 participants, I found that 40% of individuals who currently play at least one NYT Games puzzle had a high motivation to compete against friends and said they wanted a feature to invite friends to play against in real time.
Growing Subscriptions Through Play: Building a Competitive Feature
The Problem:
NYT games players love competing and want to be challenged, but there is a very limited feature addressing this need.
The Goal:
Explore ways of adding a competitive feature to grow Games subscriptions and increase user retention over time.
Using Competitive Analysis to Inform Design
Through a user survey, I gained valuable insights that helped narrow the project scope and identify a specific user problem to solve. To complement this user-centered approach, I conducted a competitive analysis. This analysis focused on identifying existing features within competitor apps that encouraged user competition.
Main insights gathered:
Competitive/Cooperative Modes:
Some competitor apps offered head-to-head modes for competition, alongside solo and cooperative modes that allowed users to collaborate or work alone on puzzles. This highlighted the potential value proposition of both individual challenge and social interaction.
Incentive-based Reward Systems:
Competitor apps frequently utilized incentive programs to encourage user retention. Players earned rewards for returning, which could then be used to purchase power-ups.
Alignment with NYT Games' Model:
However, this incentive-based approach with purchasable power-ups did not appear to align strategically with the established model of NYT Games. NYT Games prioritizes a more casual, puzzle-focused user experience, where the core gameplay remains the main driver of engagement.
Interviewing the Users
My target users were current NYT Games players. I interviewed 5 users over Zoom to learn what motivates them to play, how they like to compete, what they’re hoping to achieve while competing.
Sadly, hindsight is always 20/20 as there were a couple things I realized after diving into the research:
More behavior questions: I could have gotten even better info by adding questions about people's actual habits.Like, when do they play these NYT Games? Do they knock them out in one sitting or come back to them later? This would have helped tailor the design to fit how people actually use the games.
Playing the competition: Including user research with people who have experience with competitors, such as the Washington Post's word games or Words With Friends 2, could have provided even more valuable insights. Understanding their experiences with these competitor features would have helped inform a more well-rounded design of NYT Games' features.
Uncovering Patterns
To make sense of data collected in interviews and begin to form the user’s perspective, I created an affinity map and gathered these main insights:
Takeaway
With these insights, I developed personas to represent different user groups and their needs. This helped me create a more inclusive design.
Social and competitive factors strongly motivate users to play
Understanding the Users
Based on my research, I developed two personas representing distinct user types with unique competitive drives. Due to time constraints, I prioritized the core insights and overall problem of limited competitive features within NYT Games.
User goals addressed:
Bond with friends with healthy competition
Display numbers and statistics to quantify and compare their performance
Shaping the User Experience: Feature Prioritization, User Flows, Sketches
Feature Prioritization with the MoSCoW Method
Using the MoSCoW method was vital in prioritizing the most impactful features based on the problem and user goals. This guided the creation of the following user flow, which maps the key logistics, user interactions, and screens needed for the 1v1 feature.
Mapping the User Journey with User Flows
To get a clear visual of how the solution will be implemented, I created the user flow to match the core task of the app: Starting a game of the new feature, Duel Mode.
Low Fidelity Wireframes
I sketched out the main components of the user flow, then incorporated feedback interactions and cancel options to ensure that good UX practice was being included in my high fidelity frames.
A Guerilla Approach to User Feedback
To understand user preferences for the competitive feature, I conducted a guerilla test with my sketches targeting both current NYT Games users (2) and potential new users unfamiliar with the app (3), all aged 20-32.
Interestingly, user feedback revealed a strong desire to see more than just win/lose results. Because the initial screen design only displayed the win rate, participants expressed wanting the ability to compare their overall score with their friend. Based on this valuable insight, I decided to combine win/lose screens and incorporate a dedicated scoreboard showcasing players' cumulative progress throughout their games.
Head-to-head score was separate from stats page
Winner pop up screen from sketches combined with score screen
Building a Design System
Ensuring visual consistency and streamlining the development workflow were crucial for this project, particularly given the limited time frame. While an existing NYT Games UI kit would have been ideal, one wasn't readily available.
Through proactive planning during the initial scoping phase, I identified this potential need early on and by allocating time between user interviews and data analysis, I was able to develop a basic design system throughout the project lifecycle.
Typescale
Some typefaces were not publicly available or free to use, so I did my best to find similar ones.
Iconography
When I realized even some of the icons were custom and the symbols for each game didn’t exist as SVGs, I knew I was in for some work.
Though this was frustrating, I wanted to do my best to emulate the current UI so I created custom vectors for the leaderboard, stats, home, archive, and account icons. For the color icons, I used Adobe Illustrator to “trace” and vectorize them.
Wordle Components
By creating the Wordle tile and keyboard variants from scratch, I was able to maximize efficiency and consistency using reusable components.
Hi-Fi Wireframes: User Testing and Design Iteration
Problems with the Stats Design:
Unmoderated usability testing with 18 participants revealed key areas for improvement. Users were not interpreting the statistics screen as intended, head-to-head scores were not immediately recognizable, and score comparisons were hard to differentiate.
Crafting a Solution:
I went back to the drawing board alongside my desk kitty to ideate a variety of potential solutions for A/B testing. This iterative process allowed me to refine the effectiveness of different layouts and identify the most promising wireframes for user testing.
A/B Testing:
A/B testing with 6 users further optimized the post-game experience. Screen A was preferred for its visual clarity, but Screen B had valuable statistics that people wanted. From these insights, I made the decision to combine the 2. By combining user feedback, testing insights, and the needs of the "Statistician Challenger" persona, the post-match screen was revised to provide valuable player statistics in a more organized way.
Introducing Wordle’s Duel Mode
Invite a friend to play against head-to-head in real time. Wait for them to join the lobby, then ready up. Users can cancel their invite.
Invite a friend to play
You get 6 tries to guess the Wordle. Whoever guesses the word fastest wins. Didn’t get to beat your friend to it? Play again tomorrow to get another chance!
Race against time to get bragging rights for the day
Keep score of your games
For the numbers and statistics lovers, compare your performance to your competitors. Toggle between tabs to access your solo play stats.
Key Learnings and Future Considerations
This project highlighted the importance of user research and empathy in design. Having referred back to my personas was really key in keeping the design user-centric. Moving forward, there are several paths for exploration to improve the user experience and my skills as a designer.
Continuous Learning
In an ideal world, I would have liked to
Conduct user interviews with players who frequent competitor apps. This would provide valuable insights into their pain points and preferences, helping us identify opportunities to improve our user experience and differentiate NYT Games in the market
Use observational research to gain insights into how users interact with NYT Games to uncover behavior patterns that I couldn’t have gotten with remote interviews.
Collaborate and have design discussions with game designers and developers to refine core mechanics and gameplay. As I was conducting user testing, I was finding holes in the logistics of my game. I have thought “Wordle’s word pool would run out twice as fast if I implemented this game”, or “if the winner screen is displayed, should the opponent get the option to solve the word?”.
Expanding the User Experience
Social Features:
Based on user interest, implementing an in-app friend invitation system and result comparison notifications could help foster a sense of community and friendly competition among users.
Design a co-op mode for users who prefer taking a break from Wordle to strategize their guesses and make it point based.
Introduce a match history feature, allowing players to view each other's guesses after a game. This fosters social interaction and encourages a sense of shared accomplishment or friendly competition based on their performance.
