I Know Stuff: #1 quiz game in America

iOS and Android by Guilardi Mob

Why

A few years ago, quiz and trivia games were booming in the US, but there were no games featuring Brazilian references.

What it is

"I Know Stuff" is a game that challenges you to identify the movie, city, TV show, character, or brand based on the clues provided.

My role

UX Designer.

Persona

João The Teenager Student

Age: 12 years-old
Hometown: Brasília, Brasil
Family: Lives with his parents
Occupation: Full-time student

João is a Brazilian student who attends his classes every day. He enjoys school and hanging out with his friends after lunch. He spends a lot of time on his smartphone, playing games like Candy Crush and NBA2K. João likes to interact with his friends while playing, and quizzes are perfect for that. However, he doesn't speak any English, and most trivia games offer foreign references that he doesn't fully understand.

User Story

As João The Teenager Student, I want to play quiz games that I understand so that I can interact with my friends and have fun".

Hyphotesis development

Problem Statement

"João is a Brazilian student who needs to understand what he's playing because he wants to interact with his friends."

Positioning Statement

For Brazilian teenagers who don't speak English and are immersed in Brazilian culture, *I Know Stuff* is a quiz game that offers a fun user flow of trivia, where players need to guess the movie, city, TV show, character, or brand. Unlike Icon Pop Word and other quiz games on the App Store and Google Play, our product will excite Brazilian players with the experience of playing a cool trivia game while interacting with their friends.

The first layout to be tested

"The first layout created for the project was tested with a couple of users. While trying to validate the user flow and the journey itself, the main comment I received was, 'It looks too serious; it doesn’t look like a game.' Looking back today, I kind of agree."

The second round

Then we developed a more lighthearted layout, and users were much happier with it. The feedback improved, but we continued iterating.

Last round before launching

Logotype to icons logo

The "I Know Stuff" logotype was replaced with the quiz icons themselves. This improved intuitiveness and made the game store more appealing.

The colorful UI

It was incredible how this colorful layout attracted children's attention. They were excited to try the game, which helped us identify more issues with the user flow—crucial for a quiz game—while we received fewer improvement suggestions related to the visual design.

Obviously, Icon Pop Word was our main reference, and I learned that sometimes it's better to follow what’s already working well rather than starting from scratch with all the visual research.

Launching

The most valuable lesson learned from this project was the difference between our assumptions and what people actually perceive as "easy" or "hard" in the real world.

Initially, we designed a specific user flow based on the complexity of the icons to be guessed. However, this flow presented significant pain points and users struggled during certain phases, especially at the beginning of the game. This negatively impacted the overall user experience.

Quiz games need to strike the right balance between ease and challenge throughout the user flow.

That’s why, when we first launched the MVP, we tracked every user’s answers at each phase. By the end of the day, we realized our initial assumptions were wrong. So, we continuously reordered the phases to improve engagement. A couple of months later, it paid off.

I Know Stuff today

The impressive outcomes

Long story short: it became the most downloaded app in Brazil’s Google Play and App Store during the first half of 2014. The main Brazilian TV news anchor, William Bonner from Jornal Nacional, even tweeted about his own icon being represented in the game. It quickly became a sensation among students, and today, Guilardi Mob has several trivia games and apps using the same structure. Later, I Know Stuff was adapted for different countries, and now it’s the #1 quiz game in America.

You can check it out by downloading the app: