CASE STUDY / 01
COMPANY
King
PRODUCT
Farm Heroes Super Saga · Candy Crush Saga
ROLE
UX Designer
TEAM
Product Manager · Developers · Data Analysts · Research
RESPONSIBILITIES
UX Design · Research · Prototyping · Experimentation · A/B Testing
PLAYER → “WHY SHOULD I?” → VALUE → REWARD → SIGN UP
01 / OVERVIEW
Creating a King account protected player progress and unlocked additional benefits, yet many players skipped the experience altogether.
The opportunity was significant: increasing account creation could strengthen player connection while supporting a key product goal. But simply making sign-up easier wouldn’t be enough. We first needed to understand what was stopping players from seeing it as worthwhile.
02 / RESEARCH
Understanding player's behaviour: to skip
We combined moderated play sessions, behavioural observation, analytics and existing player feedback to understand what was happening at the moment players were asked to create an account.
The pattern was clear: players weren’t struggling to complete the flow. They were choosing not to.
Account creation felt like a hassle, offered no immediate benefit and interrupted the reason they had opened the game in the first place: to play.
The question shifted from “How do we make sign-up easier?” to “Why would a player want to sign up at all?”
"Aha moments"
THE KEY INSIGHT
The problem wasn’t sign-up.
It was perceived value.
→ Players didn't see the exchange as worthwhile.
03 / DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Designing the value exchange
01
Make the value clear
Show players why an account is worth creating before asking them to commit.
02
Reduce friction
Remove anything that gets between player intent and account creation.
03
Make the benefit tangible
The incentive needed to feel genuinely valuable and aligned with player motivation.
04 / UI EXPLORATION
HOW SHOULD WE ASK?
Testing: Framing → Clarity → Action
With the value exchange defined, we explored different ways to frame the benefit and turn account creation into a clear, compelling action.
05 / SOLUTION
THE FINAL EXPERIENCE
Flow: Value → Action → Immediate reward
The final experience made the exchange explicit: understand the benefit, create an account, and receive the reward immediately.
06 / IMPACT
+486%
NEW KING ACCOUNTS
Uplift in new-in-the-network King Accounts created during the one-week event.
+304%
PLAYER
SIGN-INS
Increase in new players signing in during the event.
+4.9%
GAME
ROUNDS
Increase in daily game rounds during the experiment.
07 / SCALE
At scale, the rollout increased the share of DAU with a King Account by 3+ percentage points, generating tens of thousands of additional accounts per day.
08 / REFLECTION
Conversion begins with earning the right to ask.
This project changed the way I think about conversion.
At first, I believed we were solving a sign-up problem.
In reality, we were solving a value communication problem.
The experience wasn’t failing because players were unwilling to create an account.
It was failing because we hadn’t earned the right to ask them.
Since then, whenever users avoid a feature, my first instinct is not to redesign the interface.
It is to question whether we have made the value clear enough in the first place. What began as a conversion experiment became a repeatable learning about value, timing and friction — one that successfully scaled into Candy Crush Saga.
