Guess The Year
Cortland Rose Studio // September 2023
A friend of mine started a podcast centered around fans of the Grateful Dead listening to clips from live shows and trying to guess the year of the show, picking up on hints like instruments, taping quality, etc.
It gained significant popularity including the attention of the band itself, and he reached out to me to help him turn the idea into fun and engaging mobile app version.
My Role
Gameplay Mechanic Designer
Lead UX/UI Design
User Research
Competitor Analysis
Team
One Designer (me)
One Stakeholder
Timeframe
Sep. 2023 - Oct. 2023
3 Months
Tools & Testing
Figma, Google Forms
Quick Summary
The Challenge
How might I translate a podcast-specific trivia game into an engaging and intuitive mobile experience?
The Solution
The top priority was ensuring the app kept what made the podcast so engaging. I conceptualized a template for gameplay that could be scaled eventually to player vs. player, live hosted sessions, and more. Each round consisted of a song being played, a year selector, and a submit button, as well as gameplay mechanics to allow for more competition as opposed to just if a user got the year right.
The review page of each round would show just how far off a user was, and implemented extra ways to earn points in order to make the leaderboard more competitive.
The Results
At the time of creating this project page (Oct. 2023), the designs are done and waiting to review with the Grateful Dead’s licensing company.
Project Details
Designing the Gameplay
Video games are a hobby of mine so I was very excited to try and come up with a a mobile-first version of an originally audio-only game. To get some inspiration, I looked at trivia games I had played in the past.
I knew immediately if the scoreboard was solely based on getting the year right or wrong there’d be very little to differentiate skills amongst the competition. The users are very passionate about the Grateful Dead, and up until now their knowledge of live shows and ability to pick out a year or timeframe was mostly a “party trick”, as one user put it.
Some ideas I had that could increase the gameplay and better showcase individual skill level were:
Time To Guess
Since each song would play for 30 seconds, I added a mark that started at 150 points and would slowly diminish as the song played. Users who guessed quicker, and got the year correct, would be rewarded
Years Off
Users and listeners of the podcast are highly skilled and generally get within just a couple years off. The idea would be to reward more points if the guess was closer, and even more if it was spot on
Auditory Clues
Guessers on the show give reasons for choosing a year, and can range from recording quality, specific instruments, singers, etc. If they could select what they hear and are correct, they’d be rewarded
Iterations
The wireframes my friend initially sent over (shown below) showed a very simplified app. It was a once per week live game that users would join and compete against each other to win.
I voiced concerns about not giving users enough to do in the app, and he agreed. From there, I set off to look at competitors and design (from my expertise with UX s well as love of video games) a version of the app that would be fun, engaging, keep users coming back, and allow for scalability.
The first few versions were more just ideation and thinking through flows, information users may be interested in, gameplay, and types of gameplay.
The game itself would be simple. At it’s core, users needed to hear a snippet of a song and guess a year. Typing a date seemed like unnecessary interaction, so I played with some alternative selectors
One key piece of the podcast version of the game is users explaining what they heard that led to the year they picked. I wanted to incorporate that in a way users could engage with while listening, almost like note taking.
That led to another thought: if users would be inputting data, in this case what led to their choice, we could aggregate all of it and display it back to the users as a word cloud of sorts to see what other listeners heard as a fun kind of measuring stick of skills.
By roughly the fourth iteration of the designs the game was starting to take shape. There would be a homepage where users could select the game of the day, play previous days, or challenge users online.
The gameplay itself would show the user the rules and give users a countdown to the first song playing. They’d be rewarded with bonus points if they could guess the right year before the snippet was over, and if they wanted they could select their clues.
Lastly, on the results page they could see how far off their guess was, along with a histogram of guess distribution, their score, and the top three auditory clues that were heard.
Version five of the designs didn’t change the UX much, primarily the UI. These changes included adding a tally of checkmarks and Xs to see your status through the round and the ability to favorite the song if they wanted to listen to it later. I also put together a very rough version of the final round screen.
At this point the game was feeling very good so I started to put together a working prototype to demo for my friend, and eventually the executives.
Below is an example of animation for the end of round result screen. I updated the design to contain concentric circles in the Grateful Dead skull to add some apprehension and excitement; If the user was one year off, only three circles would fill. If they were four years off, none would, etc.
The “final” iteration of the designs included a few more quality of life improvements. Instead of checkmarks and Xs, I now showed smaller versions of the concentric circles for a better at-a-glance view, as well as added ways to earn points and be competitive with opponents.
Next Steps
At the time of writing this (10/2023) the designs are just about complete and we’re waiting for a final date to present to the Grateful Dead executives.