Product Design Strategy
Creative Direction
Concept Design
User Experience Design
Visual Design
IGN is the online destination for serious gamers and those seeking entertainment news and reviews. While they had carved out a niche audience and destination early on, others were now challenging them for attention. Reddit, Wikia, Machinima, Twitch, and Amazon quickly became direct competitors.
IGN’s corporate goals centered around growing owned & operated video revenue, discovering better ways to monetize mobile content, and growing / diversifying ad products across consumption surfaces.
Leaning into these goals, I led the product direction and design for a ground-up redesign of the IGN core native app for iPhone and iPad.
The app release earned a spot in the Top 10 most popular apps in the iOS (then iTunes) app store.
This release of the app garnered over 1000 reviews, and maintained a 4.5 start rating in the iTunes store.
Comparing the general gaming audience with IGN users, our audience over-indexes within several categories. We knew that our "Loyalists" segment would most likely lean into a new app. The most interesting audiences to consider for the new product were "Influential Core" and "Prestige Gamers". The team aligned to design and build for an audience who proudly identify as gamers who are reliable early adopters, and are multi-screen and multi-platform users.
While our mobile web presence gave us wide reach, our current (outdated) native app and franchise apps posted high engagement numbers. We saw huge user engagement with video on mobile devices, and knew through product experiments, that in-line and top-of-screen promotions for IGN franchise apps (apps focusing on a single entertainment franchise, such as Call of Duty) led to increased download rates.
I met directly with Ziff’s COO (now President) on several occasions to discuss the direction and, ultimately, a go or no-go decision for the product.
Ziff Davis brought their knowledge and performance history of their native apps to the table, questioning the value for a dedicated IGN app. Their comparison example was for PCMag. Poor return user numbers and low ongoing user engagement over time vs. the opportunity cost for design, development, support, and maintenance of a stand-alone app was the challenge presented.
I formulated and shared some assumptions: 1) PCMag users most likely upgrade their devices every 2-4 years, 2) users download the app to learn, discover, and explore in order to inform their buying decision, and, 3) likely don’t have a need for an ongoing relationship with a native app. IGN is a different story altogether. In addition to IGN’s users relying on gaming reviews year-round, there are also seasonal waves that further drive engagement such as winter holiday game releases, summer movie season, international events such as San Diego Comic-Con, and more.
IGN's president and cross-functional teams were already bought into the vision. Through these conversations, I was able to secure the new holding company's position. I kept both our San Francisco exec team and Ziff's COO informed throughout the product design, development and release.
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