As I have taken on the responsibility of improving the design of Knowledgehook's product for teachers, I have gotten into the habit of studying commonly used interfaces. There are a number of companies that I look for inspiration including Netflix, Spotify, Shopify and etc. I don't see the point in trying to reinvent the wheel for different user challenges when I have the opportunity to steal experiences from a variety of platforms.

‍

Stealing Product Ideas

Here is how I decided which companies to copy for different components of the Knowledgehook product:

Onboarding

The goal of any  onboarding experience is to allow the user to see value as quickly as possible. In the case of Knowlegehook, the teacher only sees value once their students have answered a series of questions designed to assess their understanding of a specific math concept. This obviously cannot be done in one sitting and usually takes a few days to experience. A company that faces a similar challenge and has done a remarkable job of acquiring users is Shopify. An aspiring ecommerce entrepreneur does not have the ability to create a store and sell their product immediately. However, Shopify has done a great job of getting their users to feel like they're extremely close to selling online the moment they sign up.

Selecting Lessons

There are a number of components (topics, learning goals, question formats) to the math curriculum of a single grade. There are also a number of students who are at different levels - meaning that teachers need to create assignments that can teach and assess different parts of the class. A company that showcases and personalizes their content extremely well is Netflix. The number of clicks to value - which in their case is watching a movie or TV show is extremely low (relative to the variety of content available).

Upgrading to Premium

This was a difficult one for me as I don't think a lot of companies do this very well. I recently learned that Spotify has a remarkable 50% conversion from its free to premium accounts. Taking a look at their product, I noticed that they do a great job of communicating the value of their premium solution by allowing the user to bump into the right number of pay walls at an appropriate time. This is a delicate balance as too many pay walls can lead to a poor free account experience and force the user to abandon the product altogether. On the flip side, an insufficient number of pay walls can cause the user to not value the idea of purchasing a premium plan.

Diving Into Call of Duty: Mobile

My next area of focus is to improve the student experience. In order to properly do this, I wanted to see what I can learn from an extremely immersive experience used by most K-12 students today. This led to my decision to play the mobile version of Call of Duty. The game was released at the beginning of October, and its performance so far has been worth the hype. The game notched 148 million downloads across its first month on the market and generated $53.9 million in sales across the stretch, according to data from Sensor Tower. It's also generally gotten good marks from players and critics.

A deeper look at the structure of their onboarding and their game play shows the level of thought that they put into optimizing the game experience for mobile users.

The game presents two options - either signing in as a guest or using your Facebook account. For the purpose of this blog, I signed in as a guest. Users are then forced into going through an onboarding flow to learn and hopefully get hooked into the game.

As you can see below, the first screen gets right into creating your character name. Note how they say character (not user) which already has the user intrigued about what could potentially come next.

Instead of trying to extract more information about the user, the game goes straight into the first 'moment of delight' - which is to learn how to play the game. The game also continues to follow the storyline using Simon Riley as the narrator.

While I am admittedly not a gamer by any stretch, the controls are incredibly simple to follow and mimic the controller of a typical gaming console.

Instead of learning multiple steps at once, the game gets the player to focus on learning one step at a time (as shown by the following screen shots). It carefully plans each move so that you're practicing the previous steps you learn (e.g. movement).

Note how the game allows you decide whether you're for the advanced or simple mode - allowing the user to self-select into a group based on the progress made so far.

The game is careful to make sure that user feels like they've achieved something at each step. Once the user has finished playing any battle, they're bound to see a victory screen and receive a pseudo-reward that will help the user progress through the game.

Now that you've had the experience of learning how to play the game, the onboarding starts with your setup. Given that you have a sense of how the gameplay works, the user will presumably be more bought into the entire process and see the value of various steps. Here's a few screenshots on how they go through the process of setting up your weapon for battle.

Even though there's a lot of different buttons (creating the potential for drop off), the game drives the user through the onboarding process by emphasizing one button per screen.

Note how the game creates a moment of delight out of each step - whether its completing bootcamp or purchasing/upgrading a weapon.  By making the user seemingly work for each of these upgrades, the game is laying the groundwork for users to get hooked onto these different moments. This will help increase the likelihood that the user plays the game regularly and progress to higher levels.  

After getting setup, the game wastes no time in getting you to your first 'real' battle. Note how the first game takes you through an experience where you play against AI mode for practice. This allows the user to see initial signs of success - a critical piece to getting a user hooked into the game over the long term.

Even though it is on AI mode, it'd be hard to tell based on the usernames selected on the field below. The attention to detail is remarkable as a lesser gaming company would have "Player 1, Player 2 and etc."

Once the battle is finished, I noticed how the game steals from Fortnite to include a Final Kill Cam. An interesting development in the gaming industry is how games need to be designed for the gamer and the viewer. This creates the opportunity for games to become that much more immersive and viral.

Upon finishing the mission, the game shows how you're tracking toward various goals. This creates the feeling that you're working towards something measurable all the while showing that you have a long way to go.

The game then walks you through a comparison to show how you did vs. the rest of your team and your opponent. The competitive element of the game (in addition to the other pseudo-incentives) is another great way of ensuring that the gamer keeps coming back to get better.

The game further cements the feeling of success by throwing a number of 'awards' toward the gamer. This includes a 'level up' - which earns the user credits to upgrade their weapon and a hand grenade.

At the very end, the game rewards the user with a sign-in reward. This was a really smart move as the real intention was to show what the user could potentially 'earn' by signing in every day.

‍

‍Conclusion

Here are a couple of things that I took away from the experience of playing this game:

1) It is incredibly important for the user to see value from the game right away. The sooner they can see the perceived value of the application, the more likely they'll be hooked for the long run.

2) Users appreciate the idea of having incentives throughout their journey. They're more likely to complete an onboarding when they feel like they're working towards something.

3) It is critical to have a social component that builds a sense of community. This doesn't have to come from real-life friends - as people from younger generations are very comfortable with the idea of having 'internet friends.'

While I don't think that any of the competition within education technology aspires to be next Call of Duty (in terms of design and experience), this is the standard I must hold myself to. The reason for this is because users won't compare their experience within a specific vertical and would ideally want the best of all worlds.

At the very least, I think it's certainly possible to 'steal' experiences from successful products such as Call of Duty and build on top of their success.

‍