Jundoo Game Platform
A User-Centered Website Experience Driving Million-Dollar Fundraising Success (0-1)
Overview
Jundoo Game is more than just a physical strategy board game. At the heart of the project lies its core challenge and greatest innovation: creating the "Epic Interactive System," a groundbreaking digital platform. Our goal is to leverage this system to seamlessly integrate traditional tabletop combat with dynamic narrative storytelling, creating an unprecedented "phygital" gaming experience.
Timeline
2023 Q3 - 2024 Q1
My Role
Product Designer
Responsible for
UX Research & Strategy
UI Design
Prototyping & User Testing
Platform
Desktop & Mobile Web (RWD)
"Ensure users instantly grasp the game's unique appeal and gameplay mechanics."
Upon joining the team, I immediately aligned with leadership on the company's strategic direction and roadmap. We clarified that crowdfunding would be our primary exposure channel, making the official website and game demo platform critical touchpoints for guiding potential customers.
1
How to define an MVP and ensure core goals are met under tight deadlines?
Our immediate goal was to launch the product before the Lunar New Year to capitalize on the pre-order rush. However, as a startup with limited time, manpower, and budget, we faced a conflict: building a platform with an ambitious vision—covering marketing, crowdfunding, lore, community, and phygital integration—while strictly adhering to the deadline.
2
How to design for an unprecedented experience?
The vision for the "Epic Interactive System" was to turn every physical match into a unique RPG scenario, adding strategic variables to the board game. The challenge was twofold: How do we introduce a never-before-seen interaction model to players? And how do we ensure digital intervention enhances rather than disrupts the core social fun of tabletop gaming?
The "Epic Interactive System" adds unique narratives and scenarios to Jundoo battles, increasing replayability for offline matches and realizing a true "phygital" context:
As the sole Founding Product Designer, I had to balance crafting a great product experience with helping the team overcome business challenges. From day one, I established a design process aligned with our timeline to ensure design could truly drive impact:
1) Explore & Define
I firmly believe that effective design intervention stems from a deep understanding of goals and user personas. Beyond initial alignment, I led workshops to guide the team in critical thinking and building consensus on "Who is our Target Audience?"
2) Coverage & Design
In this phase, we conducted extensive competitive research and brainstorming sessions. Guided by our initial hypotheses, we rapidly built website prototypes while simultaneously using mood boards to define the visual style and Design System.
3) Validate & Iterate
Following prototyping, we launched a comprehensive testing plan to measure design effectiveness and validate our hypotheses. Based on the resulting data and user feedback, we made informed decisions to correct our course and drive continuous product development.
Structuring Requirements & Information Architecture
Through stakeholder alignment sessions, I synthesized the team's expectations for both the product and the website. After several rounds of discussions to define development priorities, I delivered a finalized IA map. This served as the blueprint for our development roadmap, providing the team with a clear basis for feature prioritization.
Defining Positioning via Value Prop & Competitive Landscape
As a new startup, our biggest initial challenge was answering: "Who are we?" and "Where is our Target Audience?". To validate Product-Market Fit, I utilized the Value Proposition Canvas and Competitive Perceptual Maps as frameworks during our internal strategy workshops.
These sessions helped us crystallize a clear market strategy and key audience hypotheses:
Primary Target: "Casual Strategy Players" seeking more depth than party games but without the burden of studying complex rules for hours.
Growth Opportunity: Our game's accessibility and portability make it the perfect entry point for "Board Game Beginners" willing to engage in tactical thinking.
Future Expansion: The planned "Epic Interactive System" will further layer strategic variables onto this foundation.
Visual Research & Mood Boarding
To define the website's visual language, I conducted extensive UI research for each functional page, collecting references to guide the initial design drafts.
I then used mood boards to align with the project leader and game artists on the color palette and UI atmosphere. We established a distinct art direction: "Epic Cinematic" meets "Playful Fantasy," emphasizing the game's unique dual-race lore characteristics.
All preliminary preparations aimed to maximize our startup's success rate. Within the time constraints, I focused on providing clear strategic direction and rapid, testable hypotheses to keep the team anchored and moving forward toward our goals.
User Testing & In-depth Interviews
Upon completing the initial high-fidelity design, we identified critical user flows and launched usability testing using interactive prototypes. Through iterative testing with 17 participants, we validated and optimized the design to ensure users could successfully complete all primary tasks.
Testing Scope & Key Tasks
We asked participants to perform the following tasks on the prototype, followed by an actual physical gameplay session to gauge interest:
Understand Gameplay: Comprehending the core card rules.
Register & Play: Account registration and using the "Epic Interactive System."
Purchase: Purchasing the board game.
Tournament Sign-up: Successfully registering for an official tournament.
Physical Gameplay: Playing the actual card game to assess qualitative interest.
Participants
14 Casual Strategy Players (Primary TA)
3 Hardcore Board Gamers (Control Group)
Objectives
Validate Flows: Verify the four Critical User Paths defined by the team.
Reduce Risk: Identify and fix usability friction points before development to ensure the design supports business goals.
Validate TA Hypothesis: Confirm if our assumed Target Audience is worth the investment.
Key Metrics
Task Completion Rate
Qualitative Feedback
Single Ease Question (SEQ) (1-7 Scale)
Qualitative Feedback
The results strongly validated our hypothesis that Casual Players are our core audience:
Casual Players (14): 11 gave positive feedback and showed clear purchase intent (e.g., asking about the launch date), while 3 remained neutral.
Hardcore Gamers (3): 2 were hesitant, and 1 expressed low interest.
SEQ Scores
While most tasks performed well, the "Interactive System" score highlighted a key area for improvement:
Understanding Gameplay: 6.1 / 7
Register & Use Interactive System: 5.3 / 7 ⚠️
Purchase Game: 6.4 / 7
Tournament Registration: 6.6 / 7
Key Insights
1) Comprehension ≠ Engagement
The Discovery: In the "Understand Gameplay" task, while users successfully understood the rules (SEQ Score: 5.8/7), qualitative feedback revealed a deeper issue: users felt the learning process was "like reading a manual" and "lacked excitement."
The Implication: We had solved for Usability (they could use it) but failed on Desirability (they didn't want it). For a game product, this lack of emotional engagement is a conversion killer.
2) Mismatched Mental Model of the Interactive System
The Discovery: Users confused the "Offline Companion" tool with an "Online Battle" game, leading to frustration when they couldn't find the "Start Game" button. Furthermore, the requirement to frequently check the app for lore while playing cards disrupted the social flow of the physical board game.
Design Actions & Strategic Adjustments
1) Designing an "Interactive Demo" to Boost Conversion
To bridge the gap between online visitors and the physical game experience, I designed an "Online Interactive Demo." This allows users to play a simplified 3-minute match directly on the browser, letting them "feel" the fun rather than just reading about it. This became our primary tool for converting interest into desire.
2) Strategic Pivot for the Interactive System
Redesigning Onboarding: I revamped the "Offline Mode" flow, turning the introductory level into a Tutorial Mission. This guides users on how to seamlessly combine the physical cards with the digital app, correcting their mental model.
Roadmap Evolution: Based on the strong demand for online play discovered during testing, the team evolved the product roadmap to simultaneously develop both "Offline Companion" and "Online Battle" tracks, significantly expanding the product's market potential.
Note on Constraints & Trade-offs:
I originally proposed allowing users to skip narrative/music during battles to preserve the offline social flow, based on user feedback. However, this proposal was not adopted as leadership viewed the narrative as the system's "Core Reward." Reflection: This taught me how to balance user friction against core game design philosophy.
Growth Hacking Experiments
1) Pre-registration Lucky Draw
Beyond social media promotion, we integrated a "Pre-register & Win" event directly onto the landing page. By offering exclusive rewards through a lucky draw mechanism, we successfully incentivized users to sign up early, capturing high-quality leads during the crowdfunding phase.
2) Viral Marketing: Personality Quiz
We designed a "Jundoo Personality Quiz" (e.g., "Which faction do you belong to?") as a viral marketing tool. This low-barrier, highly shareable content leveraged social networks to drive organic traffic back to our main site.
Following the launch of the website and growth experiments, we utilized Event Tracking to identify areas for optimization. We maintained a rapid iteration rhythm, analyzing data and deploying intensive adjustments in 1-2 week cycles.
Outstanding Sales Performance
We initially set a crowdfunding goal of 100,000 NTD. By the end of the campaign, we sprinted past the finish line, raising over 1,000,000 NTD—surpassing our original target by nearly 1,000%.
The "Attract > Explore > Play" Experience
Our goal was to communicate the product's unique charm and value within the golden 5-10 seconds of a user's visit.
Attract: The Hero section instantly communicated our core value proposition: "Easy to pick up, strategically deep," sparking immediate curiosity.
Explore & Play: Once interest was piqued, we guided users to the "Online Interactive Demo" and "Tutorial Missions."
By replacing static reading with hands-on engagement, we successfully transformed curiosity into a strong desire: "I must play this."
Defining Success Metrics
Following the launch, I aligned with the team to establish a dashboard of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor the product's long-term health:
1) Business & Product Metrics
Gross Revenue
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
2) Growth & Acquisition Metrics
New User Sign-ups (Free Members)
Product Enablement Rate (Paid Member Activation)
3) UX Metrics
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
User Retention Rate
With these data-driven goals, we can objectively measure product growth and ensure every future design iteration is grounded in evidence.
The Shift: From UX/UI to a Business-Centric Mindset
As the sole Founding Product Designer, this project served as a valuable "crash course" in reality. I joined with a vision of crafting the perfect user experience, but was immediately propelled forward by the harsh realities of startup life: tight fundraising deadlines and the immense pressure to survive.
This journey taught me that a Product Designer's true value lies not just in solving user problems, but in solving the "right" user problems—those that drive actual business success.
This journey taught me that a Product Designer's true value lies not just in solving user problems, but in solving the "right" user problems—those that drive actual business success. I learned:
Start with "Why": Before diving into "how" to design an interface, I now first ask: "Why are we building this? Which business goal does it serve?"
Embrace Imperfection: I realized that an "80-point" product that launches on time and hits core metrics is infinitely more valuable than a "100-point" work of art that misses the market window. The art of MVP trade-offs is, in itself, a form of design.
Measure Impact: I shifted from viewing design through subjective satisfaction to connecting it with hard business metrics like Conversion Rate and Product Enablement. Design is no longer just about "look and feel"; it is a measurable contributor to business growth.