The Problem
A leading platform for games, which allows creators and developers to make and share their games, boasts an impressive 70 million users per day. However, a significant portion of their user base consists of children under 16, posing unique challenges in conducting research. Engaging with this young audience requires parental involvement, and the children themselves often wish to maintain their anonymity. Additionally, the process of identifying specific segments within this demographic, such as users who also play on other platforms, was causing delays, extending the time-to-insight to ten days or longer and bogging down stakeholders.
The Solution
The Insights team at the game platform turned to Fuel Cycle’s community platform to address these challenges. Fuel Cycle helped create a dual-faceted community for players and users as well as creators. This community facilitated a safe and inclusive environment where children felt comfortable providing feedback, and parents could see how their input influenced product changes.
Fuel Cycle enabled the platform to:
- Access and Engage Users: The game platform’s Insights team reached out to users directly and invited them to join the Fuel Cycle community via email. With Fuel Cycle’s secure email capabilities, issues of spam and fraud were circumvented.
- Maintain Anonymity and Safety: Within the Fuel Cycle community, the identities of young users remained protected, alleviating concerns about privacy.
- Profile and Segment Users: Upon joining the community, users were asked profiling questions such as whether they used other gaming platforms. This data was used to create custom groups for targeted research, significantly speeding up the time-to-insight from 7-10 days to just 2-3 days.
The Results
The implementation of Fuel Cycle’s community platform yielded impressive results:
- Reduced Time-to-Insight: The time required to gather actionable insights was reduced from 7-10 days to 2-3 days, greatly satisfying stakeholders.
- Improved Engagement: Children felt more a part of the community and were more willing to provide feedback.
- Enhanced Feedback Loop: Parents received clear communication on how their children’s feedback was influencing product changes.
- Effective Profiling: The profiling and segmentation capabilities allowed the game platform Insights team to quickly identify and reach specific user segments for research, making the process more efficient and effective.
- Reusable Data: All profiling data collected within Fuel Cycle could be reused for future targeting, optimizing ongoing research efforts.
Lessons Learned
- Community Building is Key: Creating a safe and engaging community environment is essential for gathering honest and valuable feedback, especially from younger audiences.
- Profiling Enhances Efficiency: Detailed profiling and segmentation can significantly reduce the time-to-insight, improving stakeholder satisfaction and overall research efficiency.
- Maintaining User Anonymity: Protecting user identity is crucial, particularly when dealing with children. Ensuring anonymity can increase participation and the reliability of the feedback received.
- Versatility of Data: The ability to reuse profiling data for future research needs is a valuable asset, making the research process more dynamic and responsive to changing needs.
The Fuel Cycle Difference
By leveraging Fuel Cycle’s community platform, the game platform successfully navigated the complexities of engaging with a young, diverse audience, ultimately enhancing their research capabilities and stakeholder satisfaction.
Breakthroughs require action. We built Fuel Cycle to ignite it.