Winner Winner

nWinner Winner is an online gaming app that invites users to try their skill at physical claw machine games, and then have their real-life prizes delivered directly to their front door. Playtertainment wanted to stand out in the growing arcade game app market by making their experience as reactive, authentic, and instantly gratifying as using a claw machine game in real life. This means controlling a real physical machine, not a digital representation. Their main goal was to build a product with wide appeal that meets all regulatory compliance requirements governing claw games in the USA. Other goals included built-in superior customer support, buffer-free video streaming, and speedy shipment of prizes to winners. With no established best-practices for this style of platform, Apply needed to create our own. We started by looking at the overall needs of the app from a business and design perspective and used that to inform the technological needs. We analyzed user reactions to competitor apps, and used these insights to shape a product that would exceed market expectations from day one. In order to deliver a lag free live stream of the claw machine in real-time, we needed to find a better way of capturing and broadcasting raw footage than what was readily available on the market. We also knew we needed to get physical—and had two claw machines delivered to Apply’s HQ, so we could test out our work first hand. We built the levity of the arcade experience into each element of this product from wireframes to mock-ups and interactive prototypes, so that every aspect of the UX experience reflected this playfulness. Then, we engineered sound design into the product, adding another dimension to the fun. Finally, we added to the arcade feel using gamification elements that rewarded players for winning streaks and allowed them to tally up wins towards bigger prizes later on.