The Opportunity
In our Club Penguin Island game, we were getting a 25% drop-off rate with our create account experience.
The Solution
Design & iterate through A/B testing ways that will ultimately improve our user flow completion rate by:
Simplifying or removing friction points in the form entries
Adding fun/entertainment to the experience
Providing incentives or rewards
Role
UI/UX team lead and lead designer at Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media.
The Process
Data-informed design
Partner with our BI (business intelligence) team to discover key friction points in the current flow
Partner with our BI team, producer and developers to design relevant A/B tests on our design assumptions
Hold play tests with kids to get real-time feedback from users
Improve and iterate on our designs based on our play and A/B test results
Unique challenges
Legal
Since we were a kids product, we had to ensure we followed the strict CARU and COPPA compliance legal requirements, which included asking for a parent email to complete the process and activate the account.
Parent brand alignment
All of our account creations were processed through the wider Disney Account creation system. A Disney Account was the user’s access to all other Disney digital products, not just the Club Penguin Island game. This required us to partner with the Disney Account team for brand approvals and tech alignment.
Design & Test
Current experience
An “all-at-once form”
The create account steps were served up on as a form on one screen. A one screen form may seem like a simplified user experience; however, we were seeing a 25% drop off rate before the form completion. Our theory was that it became tedious for the user to complete so many steps to get past one screen. Also, if they came across any friction in the form completion, they gave up rather than start over.
New experience
A “dispersed form” & Progress celebration
To give the user a sense of progress as they complete the form, we would break each step out per screen as they were completed. Also included in the design update:
removal of the branded Disney Account screen to simplify the flow
a progress bar with celebration particle FX/scale animations to appear with each step completion
a penguin avatar to animate and react to each step completion to evoke emotional connection to the penguin they user is bringing to life
tool tips to provide info about Disney accounts
a back button to go back a step
animated completion states for buttons as each each form is completed
generated username options if the name is taken
removal of the "already have a Disney Account" sign in button
Once we had a design and flow that was approved by the product team, legal team and Disney Account brand team, we implemented the new design (shard 2) into our Unity game as an A/B test against the original flow (shard 1).
AB Test Results
Goal: Can we improve new user funnel completion rates?
Metric: % first boots who complete account create flow.
shard 1
CONTROL
Current Experience (all-at-once form)
65.6% completion success
N/A % lift
shard 2
(Winner)
TEST A
New Experience (dispersed form)
67.2% completion success
+2.5% lift (statistically significant)
Flow Optimization
Now that we knew our revised design was a winner, we wanted to see if we could improve it even further by optimizing the steps in the flow. To determine the most effective way to serve up each of the form steps, we created variations of the designs as shards in another A/B test.
shard 1
CONTROL
First name → Email → Username → Password
Results: 84% completion
shard 2
(Winner)
TEST A
Email → Username → Password
Results: 86% completion
shard 3
TEST B
Username → Password → Email
Results: 82% completion
Take aways
Removing first name is a small win for funnel throughput
Placing email address as first step is optimal
Get the tough stuff out of the way to avoid fatiguing users later
Providing rewards
Friend referral feature
To further engage our players and connect new players with the community, we added a friend referral feature to the create account funnel.
Both the new player and existing player receive rewards when the new user signs up and completes the thank you gift form entry.
Friend referral in account creation
We added a friend referral step in the create account form so that new players can send a thank you gift to a friend who referred them.
Referee prompt
When the new player logs in, they receive a prompt letting them know they’ve received a gift from the user name they entered during sign-up. The animated rewards screen is then shown to reveal they have received the Party Blaster XL consumable item—when this pops, everyone nearby dances and gets coins!
Referrer prompt
When an existing player logs in whose name has been used during sign-up, they receive a prompt letting them know their friend has joined and that they have received a gift for helping grow the Club Penguin Island community. The animated rewards screen is then shown to reveal they have received the Party Blaster XL consumable item—when this pops, everyone nearby dances and gets coins!
Feature communication
To surface this new feature to our users, we added an evergreen marketing loading screen that is shown on rotation at login as well as a clickable banner within the friends list feature.
Marketing Loading Screen
Friends List prompt
Final design
Lessons
a feature is never “final” when launched in a live product—it can always improve
partner with BI to help inform your designs based on analytics and A/B test results
partner with BI to help understand what features should contain BI hooks and how to design your A/B tests to be scientifically sound
keep constant and open communication with stakeholders and partners to ensure they feel part of the process and to take advantage of everyone’s unique experience
Content shown © Disney.