Nomster

Case Study

Nomster (2015-2016)

Lead Designer

I have led the design in interaction design, UI, UX and game design for Nomster. Nomster is a gamified loyalty rewards platform that focus on food.

Platforms

iOS
Android

The Vision

Nomster is a project that started with blank papers. The founder has a vision of creating a product that combines food, people and gaming.

The core problem we are solving is to serve as the bridge between merchants and customers to provide rewards after each restaurant visit.

As for the merchants, they can offer discounts through games or virtual items.

Photo by Simon Karemann on Unsplash

Summary

Nomster is the first app I’ve ever worked on. It is a startup that wants to gamify the food loyalty rewards experience.

To put in shortly, Nomster wants to elevate the user experience through casual gaming and rewards.

Team & Roles

I acted as the lead designer who oversees the UI, UX and game design across the app. I also designed the characters, game assets and the animations for the games.

Design Process

Priorities & Goals

Research and understand users dining habits and experiences.
To provide an end-to-end creatively new and fun experience while searching, hunting and waiting for food.
Increase customer retention and engagement through gamification.
Create an addictive mini games and to scale it beyond the platform.

Ideations

Since Nomster is a project that started from scratch, we spent tons of time spitballing ideas and doing lots of sketches from day to day to find out the best experience we can provide to solve the needs in the market gap.

In the final iteration, we have decided to focus on two main features which are the rewards and mini games.

User Insight

I have conducted user research based on two targeted groups in the platform. The User and the Merchants.

Their main problems are:

Merchants (Providers)

They are lacking the knowledge and resources to promote their restaurant.
Suffering from very little result from current promotion methods.
Some eatery businesses struggled to get more customers during non-peak hours.

Users (Consumers)

Currently available platforms do not provide enough information
Currently available platforms do not provide enough incentives to keep using
They are not aware of such services.

Branding & Logo

Being quirky and playful is Nomster’s branding direction.

We have yet to simplify the logo in a later stage to match with our target audience based on A/B testing.

User Interface

Nomster is an unique app that fused from food application and casual games.

Hence, we tried to implement some fresh and quirky UI elements that no other apps had done before.

Rewards & Gamification

Nomster is operated as the bridge between eateries and customers.

By gamifying the platforms with rewards and virtual items to be won. Food merchants can now offer more incentives and better brand themselves through Nomster to better brand themselves.

Game Design

Get High is the first game launched in the app. I’ve helped develop the idea, characters, design and animation.

It is inspired to let users collect prizes along the way when their Nomster keep jumping higher to reach a new high score.

We have since made multiplayer available between friends and came out with new games with collaboration with merchants.

Monster Curry Theme Mini Game

Sweet Monster Game Concept

Concepts & Development

Every Nomster character and game idea started from my sketchbook, where I usually bring it along everywhere.

I usually got the requirements and descriptions from the stakeholders of how each game should be or what kind of personality does the Nomster has. I developed the sketches to create various variants of how each idea should look visually. Upon agreement, I will start polishing the drawings into illustrations or animation.

Other Media

Takeaways

Although Nomster was, unfortunately, ceased to operate after two years we have been working on it. The experience I am gaining from here is much valuable to me. It has pushed me to break my limit as a designer.

I have personally worked on every aspect of the app, and it became the starting journey of me wanting to create a meaningful product.