Kelimelik — A UX Research Case Study of a Mobile Game
Kelimelik is a word completion game with more than 15 million downloads across all app stores. The game is a Turkish adaptation of the well-known game “Scrabble.’’
In the game, you are given 7 letters and the goal is to combine them with existing letters on the board to eventually obtain more points than your opponent and win the game. Kelimelik has several game modes. While playing Kelimelik, you are able to use the chat feature and the included dictionary feature. There are also some tools that can be purchased from Kelimelik’s market, where you can spend in-game coins.
My colleague Kerem Can Demirtaş and I have enjoyed playing Kelimelik for years. During our quarantine, we decided to work on the gaming experience of it. Our research scope was to define usability problems and user needs within the game. We then wanted to suggest our solutions to the issues we found.
Before continuing, we would like to thank the developers of the game, Neslihan Aydınoğlu, and Deniz Aydınoğlu for their technical support in this process.
Note: We tested the game on version 6.3 of Kelimelik. After our tests were concluded Kelimelik released the 6.3.1 update, fixing some of the issues that we found during our tests. We have added notes to the end of the sections that have been fixed.
Our Goals
- To understand the effectiveness of the onboarding process and adaptation of the users to the game.
- To look into in what ways and how much the game causes stickiness to the user
- To examine user satisfaction and the fun factors in the game.
- To analyze the usability of the fundamental features within the game.
What did we do?
Pre-Research:
We wanted to understand how many user types were playing Kelimelik. Thus, we conducted our pre-research in online forums, Telegram, and Facebook groups. From this research we were able to define 3 main types of users:
- Spenders — People who spend money/coin in the game
- Non-spenders — People who do not spend money/coin in the game
- Game drop-outs — People who have stopped playing the game
After defining these 3 types of players we noticed that to see the whole picture we needed to add a 4th type of user that has no experience with the game. We called them “Newcomers” Thus, we designed our research around these 4 types of players.
Pilot Test
We then ran 2 pilot tests, on 2 separate participants. After the pilot tests we gained confidence in our questionnaire and were ready for action!
User Research
We interviewed 10 participants on Skype and Zoom each took about 20 minutes. Here, we aimed to understand the user’s needs, habits, and opinions about Kelimelik and similar mobile games.
Usability Test
We ran usability tests on 10 participants who are spenders, non-spenders, and newcomers on Skype and Zoom. Tasks were directed to understand the issues users had with onboarding, the tutorial, the game board, usability, the market, settings, and the support feature.
Analyze
After concluding the research, we gathered all of our outputs and used an affinity map to categorize our findings. For this, we used an online tool called Miro which allows us to collaborate our work simultaneously. Then we organized our outputs and we detected similarities and differences in all of our user types.
As a result of the analysis, we created 3 personas and divided them according to their grasp of the game.
Outputs
Persona
While creating these personas, we noticed the differences between users were not correlated with their gender and age. The differences they have depended on their grasp of the game. Thus, we categorized our participants into 3 main categories:
- No grasp at all: Low-level grasp
- Some grasp of the game: Mid-level grasp
- Users with a full grasp of the game: High-level grasp
Persona 1: Ayşe
Ayşe plays Kelimelik to spend quality time. She generally plays the game in random mode and does not want to spend much time in the game. She is not aware of the additional features that could help her during the game.
Persona 2: Deniz
Deniz enjoys playing Kelimelik with his friends. He generally does not spend in-game coins on additional features.
Persona 3: Suzan
Suzan generally enjoys playing the game to challenge herself. She is also competitive and likes playing against other high-level opponents. Suzan tries to create free time to be able to play the game.
Findings
Onboarding & Tutorial
When we looked at Kelimelik’s onboarding process, we noticed that users tend to skip it. They do not even acknowledge it. Onboarding is an essential part of the game because it affects the user’s first impression. Hence, their desire to continue to play the game. From our research we determined that the onboarding process was not effective, for most of our participants, in explaining the game’s basic features.
The interface shown during the onboarding does not accurately represent the game’s interface. This issue confuses the user when they first play the game.
The tutorial teaches the user how to play the game. However, this tutorial also confuses the user during their first interaction with the game board.
According to some of our tests, the tutorial screen was not marked enough to make the distinction that the tutorial screen is not the actual game, but a mock scenario to better understand the game. Users later, with some guidance, were able to distinguish the tutorial from the actual game and continued on to play. This issue led to unnecessary confusion, especially for newcomers.
Some of the participants who passed the tutorial quickly had a lot of difficulties staying connected and adapting to the game. Because they were unfamiliar with the in-game abbreviations and features of the game board.
So, how do users learn the game?
Some participants have learned to play the game with the help of their friends, others, by their own efforts. The Ayşe and Deniz profiles, that have been playing for a short period of time, can be seen as not being able to discover the full features and functions of the game. However, the profile with the longer playing time, Suzan, is seen to have a better grasp of the game features and functions.
Game Stickiness
All of our participants expressed that they have taken breaks from playing the game. However, participants who fit the Suzan profile, do not erase the game from their device, occasionally coming back to play the game. While the Ayşe and Deniz profiles are seen to erase the game during their breaks, taking more time to get back and play the game.
Game notifications trigger the user to interact with the game when the user is not actively thinking about it. During our research, the Ayşe and Deniz profiles expressed that the constant notifications they get from Kelimelik make them feel like they are wasting too much of their time on the game. Although they’re having fun playing it, they feel notifications intrude on their enjoyment.
Our other finding is about the registration process. Those who started playing by entering their email address or linking their Facebook account, instead of making a guest login, were seen to play the game for a longer period of time.
Players who are close to the Suzan profile who play Kelimelik very well and have put many hours in the game are seen to use the market to gain an advantage whenever necessary. These users also enjoy a rivalry with other players they have never met in person. For this profile playing Kelimelik has turned into a habit. On the other hand, the Ayşe and Deniz profiles, who avoid purchasing anything from the market, continue to play Kelimelik because of their friend networks.
Fun Factor
Another point is how users interact with the game and its interface. This interaction affects the level of the user’s satisfaction.
We tried to understand some of the factors that make Kelimelik fun:
- Strategically make the optimal move and gain the maximum points.
- Creating a word with all of the letters in the user’s hand.
- Take pleasure in challenging people in different game modes.
- Learning new words and extending their vocabulary
- Winning a long game with the last bullet!
These fun factors were indicated by all 3 of our personas however, the degree of their satisfaction differs. This distinction can be clearly seen between the Ayşe and Suzan profiles. The Ayşe profile, who does not have a good grasp of the game mechanics, can be seen choosing to play the regular game mode without trying the others. Although, she enjoys the game, it was understood that users with this profile play less than the other profiles.
Unlike Ayşe, the Suzan profile, who has a high-level grasp of the game mechanics, was noticed to take enjoyment in playing against harder opponents, wanting the game to be competitive.
Usability
In this section, we have written about the results of the usability tests we conducted to understand the critical issues that our participants expressed.
Home page:
Some of our participants did not notice that there was a profile button and a button to list all their games. Because these icons are different from the regular icons users are used to in other applications.
Player statistics are given in the statistics page and also the profile page. The profile page only has statistical information but users expect to see profile information on the profile page.
Sometimes users want to log out from their account but cannot. Their solution to this problem is to delete the game then download it again.
Game Modes:
The explanations of the game modes are not clear for all users. These should be easily understandable to all users.
The game modes are placed very close to each other thus, selecting them is not comfortable and users can easily select the wrong mode.
“My Games’’ Page:
Users expect to be able to see the remaining time left for their games. In Kelimelik there are different playing times for each game mode that can’t be seen when looking at all active games.
Game Board:
Most of the participants could not use the zoom feature even the users that have a high-level grasp of the game mechanics. When tested, they first tried to zoom by using the classic pinch movement. However, that does not work in the game. After that, they tried to use the button with a “magnifying glass’’ icon and that also did not work. While some did use the correct method of zooming by double touching on the game board, only a few were able to use this feature.
One of the goals of playing Kelimelik is learning new words. For this reason, there is a lookup feature embedded in the game. However, this feature can only be used once per word, for the word that was most recently played by any player. If players want to look for a second time, they are not able to do it. This feature was not known at all by some of our participants.
During gameplay, there are some additional features such as a “screen record’’ and share that users can use. The screen record feature is neither known or understood by most of the users. Players thought the share feature would allow them to send a screenshot of their current game. However, in some cases the share button only allowed them to send a message that says “#kelimelik.”
*Note: This share issue was fixed by the developers.
There is a tool that can be accessed from the game board menu that allows the user to see how many letters are left that players can draw from the total available letters. However, when the user interacts with the tool, an informational message pops-up to explain what the tool does. There are two buttons, one to cancel the other that says “✅ Market.” Users who tried to use this tool expressed that they felt the “✅ Market” button would directly purchase the tool, instead of going to the market as it is intended. Additionally, if they do end up in the market, they are unable to turn back in just one touch.
Market:
Some of the users (Ayşe and Deniz profiles) did not notice that there are 3 tabs in the market. The 3 tabs are Products, Buy, and Spend. It is hard to understand the contents of these tabs because the names of the tabs do not correlate with what the user expects to see.
The coin features are not understood by players who have not used in-game transactions. On the other hand, users who have used in-game coins to purchase items from the market, want to see the remaining time for each item.
The Menu:
Contact us: Here the user can select all buttons except the contact us button, due to the “Contact Us” text being a title instead of a button. Some users thought that the button did not work, others did not try to select it at all.
News: This page is not attractive to users. They do not want to go to a page that looks like an online forum.
Rules: This page is extremely text intensive. None of the participants wanted to read the whole text. They did not find what they were looking for and they wanted to be able to search it. Creating the rules page in the accordion format would allow the user to easily find what they are looking for.
Recommendations
In this section we will delve into experience issues that were not included in the personas of our interviewees. Then we will also offer some suggestions on these issues.
Kelimelik is mainly spread via friends and family connections. To better advertise the game, coin bonuses could be offered to new users, provided they become active users. Additionally this will also help the player better understand and experience the game tools and monetary system.
We noticed that the game mechanics and the onboarding process was not designed to be intuitively discovered by the user. The user interface provided in the onboarding process is not consistent with what the player sees while playing their game, adding a layer of ambiguity.
When users do not know much about what they are doing in the game, it may not be possible to enjoy the game. Users must be able to discover other features and modes within the game by themselves to fully enjoy the game.
Game modes not widely used should be pushed forward and encourage users to try different game modes. This might increase the user’s interest in the game.
Users with a high-level grasp of the game need the right opponent to get the most out of it. A special game mode that would allow high-level players to play with each other might make the game more enjoyable for this profile.
Giving players a chance to use and experience the paid tools, might not only allow the user to better understand the game but it would also be an incentive for the user to later purchase one of those tools.
The game does not have a leveling system. This does not give the incentive to the user to purchase items. A leveling system might push people to both play the game more carefully and also purchase products that will not only enhance their playing but also be able to showcase their abilities in the form of leveling up.
Kelimelik is a game that has many people behind it that wants to see more out of it. Fixing the issues might get more people excited, and create a better user experience for them.
You can find the Turkish version of this case study here.
