DisneyNow Engagement Features

MVP FEATURE INCUBATION | Senior UI/UX DESIGNER & ART DIRECTOR

The Opportunity

The ask started with a simple How Might We Statement…

Collaborating closely with product and engineering colleagues, as well as a team of insightful (and youthful) "app-visors," design embarked on the task of developing two distinct concepts. The aim was to generate heightened enthusiasm for daily app usage, while carefully considering the balance between fostering user loyalty and avoiding excessive screen time among our young user-base.

Tokens Program

While researching the competitive landscape across other gaming, streaming, and educational apps it became clear that a variety of loyalty/rewards programs were creating stickiness. While the product team went to investigate reward commerce vendors, design dove into exploration to uncover what this experience could look and feel like.

The Solution

The exploration pushed the quality of the visual identity within the current product and allowed for the evolution of a more dynamic and immersive experience. With a targeted beta rollout, bugs were caught early and token economy enhancements were refined. The launch created buzz within the Disney blog communities and lead to a 30% increase in daily app usage within the first two months.

The Tokens Experience

Guide and Prototype (Video)

A working prototype was created as a collaborative effort between the design and UX Engineering teams. Using a Unity container to wrap the gamified experience, this live demo resource and the screen-recorded video counterpart were used to create buy-in from our partners and stakeholders as well as to inform engineers of the expected level of MVP fidelity.

Enhancing with Pins

FEATURE ENHANCEMENT | SEnior ui/ux designer & art director

Pins and pin trading are a sacred Disney fan experience shared across kids and adults alike. In order to make sure the mechanics of pin-making were being thoughtfully burned down, research was conducted with various pin suppliers and several trips to Disneyland were setup for grassroots findings. After synthesizing our data, guidelines were created to establish a visual language that would detail specs required to transition a physical experience into a robust digital experience.

Pin creation is craftsmanship at its best…and craftsmanship is all about the details

With successful art direction buy-in established, it was time to place these pins into the experience

The Solution

The large visual identity lift of this innovative concept enabled the implementation of frequent updates to the app, enhancing its functionality while creating a foundation – and eventually a large backlog – of boundary-pushing features.

The Pin Experience

Guide AND Prototype (Video)

Similar to the tokens program, the pin-unlock experience was also wrapped in a Unity container, allowing design to get the buy-in and alignment needed from various partners and stakeholders.

One of the other large benefits of using the Unity container was piloting usability testing with an on-device prototype. Due to the young age of our user-base, a large gap in motor skill development existed. This testing uncovered valuable behavioral insights and the opportunity to unlock the creation of special easter egg moments of delight…the moments that you expect from Disney.