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
Players were skipping sign-up. We needed to understand why.
Creating a King account protected player progress and unlocked additional benefits, yet many players skipped the experience altogether.
Through player research and behavioural observation, we found that the problem wasn’t friction alone. Players didn’t see a compelling reason to sign up. Account creation felt like a hassle, offered no immediate value, and interrupted what they actually came to do: play.
The challenge was to change that value exchange — making sign-up feel useful rather than obligatory.
02 / RESEARCH
Understanding player behaviour
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
Make the experience quick, simple and effortless.
Later experimentation in Candy Crush Saga showed that removing unnecessary connection-choice steps preserved total connections while simplifying the journey.
03
Make the benefit tangible
The incentive needed to feel genuinely valuable and aligned with player motivation.
04 / SOLUTION
THE VALUE EXCHANGE
Value → Action → Immediate reward
05 / IMPACT
+486%
NEW KING ACCOUNTS
Uplift in new-in-the-network King Accounts created during the one-week event.
+304%
STRONG CONNECTIONS
Increase in new players strong-connecting during the event.
+4.9%
GAME ROUNDS
Increase in daily game rounds during the experiment.
06 / SCALE
06 / 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.