BEAUTY TOWN
a fashion social game to promote
positive body image
PROJECT INFORMATION
type of work: user & market research | experience & interaction design
client: Dynamo Games
employer: Moving Targets
industry: videogames
dates: June - July 2011
extent of the project: one month full-time for research & reporting + smaller activities
CONTEXT | PROBLEM | BRIEF
In Beauty Town, the user become an entrepreneur and runs a boutique while learning and giving fashion advice to female customers with different body shapes.
This Facebook social game, funded by Channel 4 and Creative Scotland, was a spin-off from fashion television shows by stylist Gok Wan. The company, predominantly male and with a background in football videogames, lacked expertise in this new market
The brief was open for me to explore how they could improve the game for their target audience and come up with ideas to connect to Channel4’s platform 4Beauty.
development stage: beta testing | debugging
monetisation: in-game purchases
target audience: girls - more specifically, women over 35, since this demographic showed higher spending in Facebook social games.
OUTPUTS | IMPACT
Study of users’ motivations, expectations, gaming habits, wishes, and dislikes
Analysis of competitors and their game mechanics
Examination of Channel 4’s unique selling points, especially the emotions and intrinsic motivations driving their audience engagement
User experience and interactions: interaction-by-intraction analysis of game mechanics and experience from the perspectives of different users
Identifying gaps and opportunities for improving the users’ experiences
Developing ideas for new in-game challenges and tasks, as well as tweaks to existing mechanics to expand playability
The report had a significant impact on the game, which eventually included most of the changes proposed except for the most ambitious game expansions.
Analysis of interactions raised concerns around users’ introduction to the game, which moved from encouraging users to create a shop and become fashion experts to asking their body measurements to assign them a body shape.
The report noted this shift in narrative and offered alternative journeys where the customisation of the avatar was more sensitive and less disruptive.
At first, the company was not convinced about implementing these changes based on qualitative insight. However, their perspective changed when data analytics confirmed that 80% of users left the game during avatar creation.