Originating in Norway, HOLD started life to help university students block the distraction of their phone, keeping their eyes on the books rather than on their screens. Utilising a novel game structure and commercial incentives, HOLD reach sky rocketed, with an estimated 50% Norwegian higher educations students downloading the app within three years of its launch.
To continue fuelling organic growth in this audience, HOLD were looking for ways to transform the basic HOLD format, into a multiplayer experience.
Design Research
Game Design
Workshop facilitation
Prototyping
Usability Testing
UI Design
Early on we identified Study Groups - groups of friends, study buddies and classmates, who met up to work together - as a great vehicle for organic growth. For groups with at least one existing user, we challenged ourselves to find a way for them to convert the entire group to HOLD.
We kicked off the challenge with a remote collaborative workshop to gather ideas from across the team. From these sessions, we decided to use bluetooth as a way to connect nearby devices and pair people together in a ‘shared’ HOLD.
We developed two game concepts. The first, ‘Team Holding’, brought players together in a single HOLD with a shared goal. If one player broke, the HOLD would be broken for everyone.
Alternatively, ‘Friend booster’ gave players a points boost for each new player they connected with during their session, encouraging them to connect with as many people as possible.
To see which concept best fit our audience, we shared them with members of our HOLD research panel. From our conversations, we identified that whilst the shared goal of 'Team Holding' would be fun - it was misaligned with the work patterns of groups working on different subjects and at different paces. We therefore focused our efforts on the 'Friend Booster'.
We continued our development of the ‘Friend Booster’ concept by running a moderated usability test using a lo-fidelity prototype. From this, we observed that our UI inferred an ‘invitation’ moment, which left users awaiting follow up steps which did not exist. In response, we simplified the joining method.
Finally, we worked with the commercial team to further incentivise the game. As well as receiving a points boost for each connection made, players would also get the chance to win a surprise sharing reward from Peppes Pizza. Highlighted in the rewards marketplace, this extra incentive provided additional promotion for the new feature.
After releasing a Beta on iOS, we timed the full release of HOLD Together to coincide with the start of the new Semester in Norway.
Whilst we didn’t see a statistically significant increase in overall sign-ups as we'd hoped, increased retention from the feature improved product growth and HOLD Together provided a new channel through which to drive future acquisition.
