Trivia Mafia App
Conundrum:
How to recreate the paper and pencil experience in a way that will appeal to reluctant adopters?
Role:
Lead UX Designer | Project Manager
Project Overview
Trivia Mafia is one of the biggest pub trivia companies in the country. The goal of the project is to create a web app that is extremely easy for users to get to and get into. The cadence of the game should be similar to using pen & paper but the app will enhance the experience for both players and hosts. The app will be flexible enough to be used for both in person and virtual trivia events. Work for private events as well as public.
Strategy
Onboarding
The first problem I had to solve was how to get users logged in, onto a team, and into the correct game. Another requirement was to allow guest users to be able to log in and to be able to join a team.
The solution was to create a two step login process with the ability to create a team then share the team code to the anyone who wants to join the team. The second step was to create a session code for the host to share at the event so the teams would be joining the correct session.
In user testing we found that people wanted to put the session code in the team code area so we changed it to team password and kept session code.
Question User Experience
We needed to create a way for teams to get from question to question, see where the active question was and to give hosts the power to force users to the active question.
On the player side we created blocks numbered 1 - 8 to represent the rounds, then we added dots to signify the question in round. We found that we needed an additional signifier to alert the player to which question is active, so we added a green highlight to the active question.
On the host side when a host reveals a question, the user is then taken to the question. User testing has found that while this doesn’t bother some teams it does bother others. We have a fix in the works to allow the user to turn off that feature in their personal settings. The host will also have the option to turn on or off that feature for an entire game.
Initial Prototype
The prototype allowed us to test the initial design and basic function of the app with the actual Trivia Mafia hosts. It was exciting having access to the team that would be taking the app out into the world.
While a lot of the features worked as expected, one that needed tweaking was the notes feature. Initially we had the notes feature just above the answer field. On pen & paper trivia taking notes was rather important because you had no way to see the question if it had already been read. We found with the app users weren’t using the notes field much, presumably because they can access the question, and were even at times mistaking the notes box for a recorded answer. We decided to move the notes feature to the bottom navigation menu and that solved the problem.
Auto-Grading
One of the problems we needed to solve was grading trivia live during events. They do this at the half and at the end of the game. With pen & paper trivia grading took up to a 1/2 hour and often required a 2nd host.
Along with the developers we discussed strategies and created a solution: auto-grading. The app would collect all the answers for a given question, group all answers that are the same together, automatically detect any answers that are within 3 characters of the correct answer and consider all those correct. When the host goes to grade a question they will see that the auto-grader has already done most of the work. They can then override any answers that should have been marked incorrect or correct but tapping on an answer.
Future versions also included the ability to award a 1/2 point and to mark an answer as funny.
Future Considerations
We are working on several enhancements that will be out in the coming months. The first of which is the leaderboard on the host side. We will be giving the hosts a lot more information about teams as well as control to eject a team or change their team name. Both the player and the host will be able to click on the leader board and see a list of all of their answers, how many points they received. The host will have the ability to edit the points if a team contests the answer and they hosts chooses to give them points.
Next up will be a flexible version of the app that businesses or other organizations can brand with their own logo and style and deploy as a lunchtime trivia for example. This will be a subscription based service.
Additionally, the teams created in the Trivia Mafia app will be able to compete is tournaments both in person as well as virtual. Joining the tournament, seeing the leaderboard, and getting notifications of placement will all happen in the app.