UX Case Studies

Reddit Avatars

Avatars are digital collectibles purchased directly by users on the Reddit website (2022-2025). Avatars can be used to represent users when posting. Each avatar is fully compatible with the customization portal to allow for mixing and matching of wearable items. In my role, I navigated rapidly changing program and consumer sentiment to drive real impact via thoughtful design, impact tangible product sales, and enable visible improvements alongside a team of talented artists and program leadership.

Situation: Reddit users had limited ways to express identity and customize presence, and there was an opportunity to explore personalization features that enhance engagement and experience on the platform. Reddit invited me to participate in a curated artist release of collectible digital avatars directly integrated and sold to consumers on their social media digital platform. As a relatively experimental program, many specifics were left up to individuals to drive progress and execution in a fast-changing environment.

Task: Design a set of 3 avatars (for gen3 release - with more to follow in later releases). The program provided basic brand guidelines, technical requirements for avatars from engineering team members, and design review with the art director, yet also gave designers a high degree of autonomy and agency in driving their own individual avatar designs and product strategies.

Approach: In order to design avatars that would excite collectors and drive sales after product launch, I focused on the following steps: 

1. Existing product analysis: review of avatars from prior generations to assess which avatars sold out first, which avatars were particularly valued by collectors, as well as developing understanding why those particular avatars did well. 

2. User Feedback Collection and Interviewing: direct conversations with collectors of avatars to understand what they loved most about their existing avatars and what they hoped to see in the future. 

3. Artist Design Discussion & Concept Ideation: engaging in ongoing discussions with artists in the program to ideate and test the limits of design innovation for collector interests within the bounds of engineering constraints.  

4. Design prototyping and iteration: drafted several concepts of avatar designs, explored different concepts, received feedback from others, and iterated to develop refined polished rendered high resolution production-ready art deliverable files. 

5. Analysis of outcomes to drive next set of releases - constant assessment of performance with sales tracking and sentiment analysis to inform future efforts.

Results: From extensive user feedback collection and community engagement, I identified the following set of insights to guide avatar design principles and product decisions:

User Feedback Insights

1. Collectors enjoy highly interchangeable and customizable designs - in particular avatars with color-changing functionality for traits were particularly well-received, since users could more easily customize to their taste or mix traits from different avatar sets by matching custom selected color schemes. Neutral color avatars (e.g. black-and-white designs) also did exceptionally well in sales and popularity, likely in part due to their ability to be used in 'mash-up' customizations across different designs. Uniquely layered designs which reveal hidden art elements only when layered across designs with multiple levels of transparency were also popular and desired.

While both layered effects and color-changing take more effort to design (additional art design, specific technical hex codes to use in layered svg files), these elements seemed to greatly enhance user satisfaction and interest.

2. High visual impact designs are more favored by collectors across the board: in particular, design elements such as bright gold and large traits (stretching to the limits of the design space) were popular. Avatars with a high degree of visual impact at a small scale such that they pop even when scaled to a smaller size in storefront views or on trading platforms were also popular.

3. Designs should scale and crop to adapt to different devices. Avatars when viewed on desktop vs. android vs. apple devices often scaled and cropped slightly differently (and in some cases flipped). When used in comments, avatars are limited by a circle framing of the head area of the avatar - so designs which utilize head-space area effectively are more impactful for consumers than just the less frequently displayed full body avatar view. A key tradeoff was balancing visual expressiveness with system constraints and clarity at small scales. Designs should consider the dynamic cropping and plan traits accordingly to take advantage of impactful design areas.

4. Exclusive releases drive immediate sales interest. Long term strategy should consider expanding authentic engagement. From a number of voice chats and conversations with leaders in the customer collector base, more limited supply releases at higher prices were consistently spotlighted as products of interest for the gen3 release. At the same time, conversations around the project origins highlighted that growing the number of overall collectors was made possible in large part due to readily accessible and lower-cost (or free) avatars bought solely for the art and design of avatars, with a slow store sell-out in early days. These user conversations revealed the importance of considering both product types (both exclusive and accessible options).  

5. Artist-engagement drives collection activity. Beyond the purely visual design elements of an avatar file, collectors expressed a strong interest in seeing artist engagement and activity. Thus user feedback collection and engagement is helpful not just for building better inherent products, but also for bringing an engaged userbase along for the journey.

Avatar Deliverables: 12 full avatar designs (each set includes 7-9 layers (hat-head-hair-hair2-body-lowerbody-accessory1-accessory2-background) designed from sketch idea conception to fully rendered polished png and svg exports following Adobe Illustrator template requirements, delivered on time for scheduled release timelines to the Reddit community (over multiple generations of release). Selected release price points and quantities that matched collector interests and tuned accordingly with each release as demand and interests shifted over time to continue driving sales.

Example Mini Sub-Case: "Spirit Seeker" single accessory: by applying the design principles identified during user feedback analysis, I developed an accessory (single trait avatar) that hit many of the touchpoints - large in scale for impact and visibility, visible in head-profile view, neutral in color to be adaptable to diverse customization color schemes, and topically engaging for fantasy and creature collectors.  Applying these design insights translated into impact - this was the second-highest selling single trait accessory design in the shop, with over 1000 copies sold!

Overall Results: $75,000+ total sales, with 2400+ unique collectors and 5900+ sold avatars. 

Examples of Avatar Designs: each design a layered vector file for customization functionality that was developed through an iterative designing process based upon the user feedback and design principles outlined above.

Avatar Process: An example of very rough pen-and-paper concept sketches (exploring overall composition, potential details, structures, avatar traits and theme categories), sources of design inspiration and thematic integration, and early drafts over avatar design rendering style options.

Avatar Marketing: & Impact: Adobe Premiere used to develop promo reels (driving release anticipation and pre-release marketing for avatars) and physical merch products for limited giveaways, particularly given the user feedback regarding artist engagement and involvement throughout the process, not just in the visual design.

Shop User Experience Improvements : Artist of the Week Feature and Banner Displays: In response to user feedback around cluttered and disorganized storefront displays, I made suggestions around avatar curation initiatives (see artist-of-week feature, which curates based around a specific artist and style) and thematic display banner design suggestions that could boost user shopping experience without requiring additional engineering features.

• Situation: Casual players and younger audience often enjoy caring for virtual companions in a relaxing stress-free virtual environment, yet existing virtual pet games seemed lacking in personalization and collecting components.

• Tasks: Design and develop a virtual pet game that provides a sense of user progress -beyond just a simple feed-clean-game mechanic, the experience provides currency collection and wearable customization to provide users with a longer pathway for active engagement and retention.

• Action: developed Adopt-A-Blob utilizing an iterative rapid prototyping approach. All game assets and graphics crafted for the app, including UI/UX elements, wearables, and interactive elements, released via the Google Play store, then iterated upon based upon actual user reviews, comments, and structured feedback collection initiatives. 

One example of a user-prompted development was incorporation of an entire suite of minigames (3-4 games) in later versions of the app that gave users more active ways to engage beyond the slower-paced collection gameplay and care elements.

A python data analysis of four years of data (analyzing click through rates (CTR), advertisement revenues vs. download rates, user retention, different store visibility and download trends, etc.) was also conducted to drive future landing page localization efforts and drive store strategies (see pdf report above - click to expand).

• Results: By incorporating user feedback into subsequent release iterations and continuing to update the app,  the game reached 30,000+ downloads on Google Play and Amazon App Stores (2015). 

Situation: Existing idle clickers and incremental games capture user attention with quantitative numerical progress, but often lack strong visual aesthetic.

Task: Develop a cozy idle incremental game which blends the best of both worlds: increasing numbers and progress-driven game loops (both clicker and idle upgrade mechanics) for driving player satisfaction, while also incorporating strong cozy aesthetics (warm colors, soft designs) and personalization and customization elements (collectible backgrounds/accessories/upgrades) to enhance user experience. 

Action: Built a rapid prototype of concept in Unity2D with github version control from scratch in the span of 3-4 months. Conducted user feedback interviews on Reddit idle clicker subreddits for real user feedback and suggestions.

Specifically, user feedback especially prompted revisions of the ad integration and navigation flows to enable more seamless transitions and delightful user experiences. Such flows were harder to test without live release, since advertisement suppliers provide only cursory testing tools for apps in non-released development, but thoughtful player feedback quickly identified sticking points for review.

Result: Ramen Clicker: The iterative releases of the app received higher ratings than initial releases and positive feedback from players as a result of improvements to flow. Developed all game assets and graphics, including animated background and foreground elements, UI (game overlay/HUD and progress meters), and interactive elements (2017).