UX Case Study

Optimizing the Daily Login Bonus System

This project was part of a bigger opt which was aimed at increasing d7 retention. Updating the daily login system was one the core decisions I took to improve d7 retention.

The Problem

Missing Hook

My analysis showed that our early-game experience suffered from a lack of anticipation and reward continuity, especially when compared to competitors like Township, which successfully use free reward systems. Specifically, our existing DLB system was fundamentally flawed in its timing and structure:

Old DLB System

Late Onboarding:

The DLB feature was unlocked at Level 8, which was far too late. Players often churned before they even discovered this valuable, recurring reward, missing a crucial chance to form a daily habit.

What the Data said

The feature was unavailable during the critical first two sessions where 50% of our churn occurs. Moving the unlock to Level 6 is a direct intervention on this high-churn period.

Weak Habit Loop:

The existing reward cycle was a generic 5-day streak. It failed to build robust behavior because it provided no visual anchor or significant reward on Day 7, the exact metric we were struggling with.

What the Data said

A massive 46.7% of the original install base had already churned or fallen inactive before even encountering the Daily Login Bonus at Level 9. This made the DLB functionally useless as a D1-D7 retention hook.

Lack of Aspiration:

The rewards were not visually exciting, and there was no sense of long-term progression. The system lacked the psychological hook of "something big is coming."

Hypothesis

Anticipation of logging back in was centered on crops, animals, and production (the grind), not on a guaranteed, escalating reward.

The Goal

My goal was not just to give out free items, but to use reward anticipation to drive daily logins consistently, particularly focusing on crossing the D7 threshold.

The main concept ? Move the feature unlock to Level 6 (Session 1) and redesign the reward structure to align with retention milestones (D7, D15, D30).

I knew people accelerate their effort as they get closer to a visible reward. I used this to design Milestone Bonuses at Day 7, Day 15, and Day 30 to create distant, accelerating targets.

The system needed to function as a powerful Anticipation of logging back in. By having valuable, cycling rewards, I provided a compelling reason to open the game every 24 hours.

The fragility of the Daily Streak makes missing a day feel like a loss (losing progress towards the high-value Day 7 reward), which is a powerful motivator to log in.

The Mechanic

I came up with the core mechanic for DLB

Escalating Rewads

I extended the streak from 5 days to 7 days with escalating rewards. We specifically designed Day 4 and Day 6 cards to look visually distinct to signal rising value, culminating in a hidden, aspirational "Day 7" reward revealed only upon claiming

The Streak

The 7-day streak system remains fragile; if a player misses a day, the streak resets to Day 1. This makes the "cost" of missing a day tangible

Long-Term Anchoring

I introduced a top-level Milestone Bonus Bar tracking progress toward Day 7, Day 15, and Day 30. Crucially, unlike the daily streak, this bar does not reset if a day is missed, preventing total player demotivation while still rewarding consistency.

Providing a distant but visible target ensures players have a reason to stay beyond the immediate week.

The most valued reward, ( day 30 reward ) would be a skin or decoration, which is something our players love receiving since a major chunk of our player base were decorators.

Drafts

Early Iterations

My first thought was to give Daily Login Bonus a new face, a life and a story of its own. This would've daily login bonus more personalised and a system of its own to grant rewards.

Ai Generated Concept

I first went with the idea of creating a speedometer engine, similar to how we see in a truck. Why ?

Farmville 3's core mechanic was to deliver truck orders. DLB as a truck dashboard would've been a tribute to the core system. I used the help of Ai to come up with different concepts on how the dashboard will look

First Iteration - Low Fi

I used the FTUE ( first time user experience ) system of our game to introduce this feature to the current players in the game

First Iteration - Low Fi

The idea was simple, everyday the user logs in, the speedometer goes up, grants the reward mentioned in each node. if the user logs in daily, the speedometer fills up, visually giving them the feedback that they're closer to their goal. ( day 7 reward )

First Iteration - Low Fi

Once the player completes the 7 days, the streak visually shows a flashy animation, suggesting they are on a streak !, the player keeps getting the day 7 rewards if they login daily after reaching Day 7

First Iteration - Low Fi

The concept was fine, other team members liked it but this idea came with a lot of drawbacks which i gathered after constant feedback sessions and testing use cases,

Hard to Scale for 7+ days

This design would've been very hard to scale considering I had to AB test for different days ( 5 days, 7 days, 10 days). the rigid design of the speedometer would've made it impossible to scale.

Rigid Reward Structure

With this design, we could only give them ONE reward per daily login, we wanted to build a system where we could grant multiple rewards in the future to run different experiements.

Long Term Anchoring Hidden

The speedometer took away all the attention from a very important section of the page, The Bonus Milestone Bar, which granted higher valued rewards with less strictness. ( no reset criteria if player loses streaks )

So i came up with a few other layouts hut keeping the core concept same,

First Iteration - Low Fi

Second Iteration - Low Fi

I iterated on the concept of showing the scaling of rewards through UI ( the bar grows as the rewards goes higher ) to highlight the goal gradient effect

I also made the reward structure scalable so that we can add different number of rewards capped at 3 per day

First Iteration - Low Fi

Third Iteration, Low Fi - Unclaimed State

After refining the structure a bit, this is what we decided to move forward with, this design also went through another round of feedbacks to refine it even further.

First Iteration - Low Fi

Third Iteration, Low Fi - All rewards claimed state

Final Draft

Now that the basic structure was defined, i came up with the final draft and defined it's flows.

First Iteration - Low Fi

Final Draft - Low Fi - Unclaimed State

I intentionally presented the feature's design in a grayscale format to eliminate visual distraction and to maintain focus during UX meetings. This move successfully prevented stakeholders from pivoting to superficial discussions about color and aesthetics, keeping the dedicated time slot strictly centered on validating the core user experience and flow logic.

I made some fundamental changes from the pervious iterations

Removal of Solid Baground

I removed the solid background so that the user doesn't feel detached from the game as soon as they open it, Since when player opens the game they expect to see the farm.

Visual hiearchy of reward sthrough sizing

For the milestone bonus as well, i showcased the reward to be scaling in size as compared from Day 10 to Day 30 to show that the value of reward is increasing

Giving more visual weight to bonus milestone bar

By adding a darker shade background to the bonus bar I tried to emphasis on the importance of the bonus milestone bar.

Flows

Flow 1 - FIrst Reward Claim

I decided to keep the flow simple with subtle animations, An arrow hover indicating that this is the reward to be claimed, a gentle star trail animation to show that claiming from the 7 day streak progresses the bonus milestone streak.

Flow 2- Milestone Reward Claim

Flow 3- Bonus Milestone Reward Claim

When the player unlocks a bonus milestone reward, the box bounces and glows to nudge the player to claim the bonus gift.

High Fidelity Screen

First Iteration - Low Fi

High Fidelity Wireframe on test device

The number of days and rewards is completely controllable through CSV and can be changed via sheet change thus making the format and structure scalable

Live in Game

After fine tuning the animations on unity and testing the layout for all screen devices this is what's live in the game.

Flow 3- Bonus Milestone Reward Claim

I made the last minute crucial decision to remove the text lavel for exclusive and grand reward and solely rely on colour of the reward for value distinction to save up on localisation cost and auto layout issues while localising texts.

IMPACT

The Impact

The redesign moved the DLB from a passive utility to a core retention driver. By combining a fragile short-term streak with a permanent long-term tracker, we created a balanced system that punishes absence without inducing rage-quits.

+120bps

To d7 Retention

Learnings

Key Learnings from the Feature

Timing is Everything

The core insight was that a great feature is useless if it's introduced too late. We learned that the Daily Login Bonus (DLB) must be present in the first session (Level 6) to influence player retention. By delaying the unlock until Level 9, we lost nearly half our potential users before they ever saw the reward.

Designing for the Long Time Retention

A single, short reward cycle fails to build long-term commitment. I learned to layer two distinct goals: a 7-day short-term sprint and a 30-day marathon track. This dual system managed player fatigue while ensuring they always have a reason, immediate or distant, to log back in.

Scability is Important

My initial design lacked one major aspect, scalability, if we were to go ahead with design, we wouldn't be able to curate the DLB system on the basis of player level and engagement or do A/B testing for the same.