Context
Fave is a social media app for passionate fans. I had the opportunity to tackle the breadth of fandom and at the same time I knew we had to turn around the difficulties we were observing through the data: low retention and growth.
Solution:
Introduce a fan-recognition and reward system based off actual fan activity
Result:
132% in Daily Active Users,
One of of Fast Company's Most innovative social media companies of 2022
My Role
Lead Experience Designer (which included UX/UI, QA, Design System)
Time
2021-Present
Platforms:
Web, Mobile
Empathise and Define
Through user interviews and surveys I wanted to empathise with fans and understand:
- What were their goals, needs, motivations and frustrations?
- How do they engage with their fandom digitally and what's missing?
- What was the daily routine of fans?
- Why is there an overall feeling of dissatisfaction in fandom?
- What were their experiences with the current solutions out there?
Insights gathered:
- Fans have an overall need to feel recognised by both peers and the artist.
- Fans want to be rewarded with tangible fan experiences
- Fans feel under-appreciated for all the different types of fan activity they do
- Fans feel cheated by scalpers and the verification systems out there
How might we allow fans to feel recognised and rewarded
Ideate, Design, Test, Iterate, Repeat
Our data showed our mode range to be between late teen (16) and early twenties (23). According to The Drum, 87% of Gen-Z said they play video games on devices such as smartphones, gaming consoles, or computers at least weekly. After multiple fans citing the same problem with the verification models out there (ticket master et al) and that their granular fan activity as fans was going unnoticed, it became clear to try out the idea of establishing our own fan verification model.
To find out more about recognition systems out there we conducted some competitor analysis around loyalty programs, points systems and gaming.
An MVP Test
As an MVP test we decided to use what we already had within the app to implement a badge system. A feature called "Fan Moments" where fan could document, in diary format, their "Fan Journey" - We decided to test the idea of recognition and reward by using this feature for fans to prove their activity in order to earn badges and claim rewards.
Unearned badge > Submit Fan Moment to earn badge > Claim reward
Why wasn't it working?
- The fan moment creation flow was too long. Too much cognitive overload. The feature itself was in question.
- Fans were still craving some sort of verification and tier leveling
- The claiming of rewards was haphazard. Fans had to claim rewards in person
Back to the drawing board: Points and Verification
Adding in a tier leveling system would give fans the status they were craving. Exploring automation of submissions through APIs (Spotify, Twitter) would alleviate the manual process of it all by meeting fans where they already were.
Fans would submit fan activity through a simplified submission flow, earn points and get verified.
Recognition Flow Diagram
Example Wires
- We explored the automation of fan activity through integrations
- Fan activity became a clear list helping users understand what they could submit to earn points instead of hiding behind badges.
- A points module was now added to the home "Dashboard" for fans to track their points
- A Fan ID for fans to show off their verification status which became a shareable asset
- Rewards were now housed in the marketplace and redeemable by your status. We successfully used this to reward fans with UBER discount codes and other digital rewards through locked URLs.
Final Designs
The Results
Fans were loving the idea of getting "Verified". Finally a solution that made them stand out from the rest.
Increase in Daily Active Users on release (132%)
And the data spoke volumes about how this new verification system was faring.
Conclusion
We are hoping to now incorporate more automatic solutions to collecting fan data with integrations such as Spotify and Twitter. Overall a great feature to work on especially seeing fans reactions on social.