Quests: tracking missions without leaving the game
An in-game widget that tripled daily Quest participation.
My role
Lead Product Designer
Team
Product Director, Engineering, Animator
Timeline
1 week
Platform
Web and app
Overview
Players were leaving their game to check the quest progress in the Lobby, then coming straight back. I designed an in-game Quest widget that shows live progress and lets players claim rewards mid-session. In the month after launch, Quest participation among daily active users grew from 3.28% to 10.21%, a 211% increase.
Context
The Win Zone has two game modes, depending on the coin the player uses: Gold Coins (GC) and Sweeps Coins (SC). Quests are daily missions, split into GC and SC missions, that reset at the end of the day. Players could only track them through a widget in the game Lobby.
The problem
The Product Director noticed a recurring pattern: players would leave a slot game, check something in the Lobby, and return to the same game. The data showed these were mostly players taking part in a quest.
Because progress and rewards only lived in the Lobby, players left their session thinking they’d finished a quest, only to find they still had progress to make. Every round trip broke their session.
Constraints
The gameplay screen had to stay clean, since we don’t control all the content inside each slot game. Anything I added had to live in the header, and it had to work for both game modes.
Options considered
Open the existing Quest modal from gameplay. Reused existing components and removed the trip to the Lobby, but players still needed an extra action to see progress.
A live in-game widget in the header. Shows progress at a glance and lets players claim rewards in one click without leaving their session. More design work, but it removes the problem instead of shortening it. Chosen.
The solution
I started with the flow: how the header should behave in every state a player could be in during a quest. Then I designed the widget itself:
Adapted the existing Lobby widget component to fit the in-game header, so it felt familiar.
Matched each game mode’s color: orange for Gold Coins, green for Sweeps Coins.
Designed a state for every progress scenario, from just started to ready to claim.
Worked with the lead animator on state animations, so progress and rewards feel alive without distracting from the game.
Players can now claim coin rewards mid-game and use them in the same session.
Where AI helped
Made fast working prototypes to validate the new designs and try out animation concepts, which led to a fast turnaround and easier handoff to engineering.
Results
Daily Quest participation tripled in the first month after launch, going from 3.28% to 10.21% of daily active users, a 211% increase.
Reflection
A small change had a big effect on the player experience. It also showed how much daily missions drive daily activity, which led to workshops on future Quest improvements, such as player segmentation and an extra bonus for completing every quest in a day.