I recorded down the presentations! (: After listening to the playbacks (with pausing and replaying), here is my review:
About the App - I think its cute to pick Draw Something as an App. I remember playing it with my friends and wishing that they would be more responsive with me. Because I am a shy person, I dared not invite acquaintances to play with me. In the end, I didn't have anyone to play with and gave up on draw something.
Implementation: I thought more details could be provided besides using Facebook JS and a server.
Good
When Zynga took over Draw Something, I really liked how they incorporated phone notifications so that I know when my friend has finished her turn. Unfortunately, by that time, few people were still playing it actively.
The UI, I agree that its quite understandable. But I somehow cannot bring myself to say that it is outstanding. There are words of different sizes and some of low value add to user understanding.
Yes it is indeed quite funny to see how my friends draw. However, some friends like to give up and write out the words on screen instead. That's not good anymore.
Bad
In order to gain revenue, they chose to make a bad decision to give a very _limited_ list of words to draw out. I agree that this is really a bad point!
Improvements & Commercial Potential
The idea of expanding to different languages is good too. I believe that the target audience can even be directed to young children as they explore their creativity and expand vocabulary. Maybe my command of Mandarin would be much better if there was a Chinese version of Draw Something for me.
Also, if I understand the presenter correctly, sponsors would pay advertising costs if the words include them or their products. Like for example, if Pepsi would like to advertise with Draw Something, they would pay for Draw Something to implement words like "Pepsi twist" for users to draw. This is excellent! However, if the product is not well known (eg. squishy shoes for mud), then it would be quite tough for users to guess. Just one of my musings. Companies must consider their marketing strategies for their own benefit.
Great job, group 7! (:
About the App - I think its cute to pick Draw Something as an App. I remember playing it with my friends and wishing that they would be more responsive with me. Because I am a shy person, I dared not invite acquaintances to play with me. In the end, I didn't have anyone to play with and gave up on draw something.
Implementation: I thought more details could be provided besides using Facebook JS and a server.
Good
When Zynga took over Draw Something, I really liked how they incorporated phone notifications so that I know when my friend has finished her turn. Unfortunately, by that time, few people were still playing it actively.
The UI, I agree that its quite understandable. But I somehow cannot bring myself to say that it is outstanding. There are words of different sizes and some of low value add to user understanding.
Yes it is indeed quite funny to see how my friends draw. However, some friends like to give up and write out the words on screen instead. That's not good anymore.
Bad
In order to gain revenue, they chose to make a bad decision to give a very _limited_ list of words to draw out. I agree that this is really a bad point!
Improvements & Commercial Potential
The idea of expanding to different languages is good too. I believe that the target audience can even be directed to young children as they explore their creativity and expand vocabulary. Maybe my command of Mandarin would be much better if there was a Chinese version of Draw Something for me.
Also, if I understand the presenter correctly, sponsors would pay advertising costs if the words include them or their products. Like for example, if Pepsi would like to advertise with Draw Something, they would pay for Draw Something to implement words like "Pepsi twist" for users to draw. This is excellent! However, if the product is not well known (eg. squishy shoes for mud), then it would be quite tough for users to guess. Just one of my musings. Companies must consider their marketing strategies for their own benefit.
Great job, group 7! (:
My first thought about Draw something is their glorious downfall.
ReplyDeleteAfter their much publicized sale to zynga, I expected improvements to the app, however it seems that wasnt what they had in mind.
You raised a good point about using the app as a form of advertising. Having a user spend a few mins to remember and draw out a company brand is a very powerful tool which companies are willing to spend lots of money on. You highlighted a good point that I never thought before, which is the issue of a less well known brand. I guess if the words are circulated frequent enough, users will start to know the brand more? just a random thought :p
Jay
Want to be geek - http://wtbg.blogspot.sg/
Your suggestions for improvements are quite interesting :) While I have to say draw something is really a excellent innovation at that time when it came out. But it turned out that the company was lazy to do some improvements and in quite a long time I could not find any change for the app. Furthermore, feed system for the app is really meaningless cuz when I played it, I really did not know what is the benefit of gaining more coins. Just for ranking higher? That seems to be quite easy to be boring and no wonder draw something lost users in quite a short period.
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree with the bad: absolutely limited list of words. I enjoy the time playing the game which unleash users' creativity. However, the list of words has limited the users' creation, people are getting bored and leaving the game.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a good idea to have more words, but it's probably hard for the companies to come up with a Chinese, Spanish etc. version of it since some languages are very different. (like Chinese is very very different from English, so it's hard for them to guess the word.) To be honest, usually the Chinese are very good at making their own versions of games, so I think it'll be hard for them to enter the Chinese market, unless they have already patented the idea.
ReplyDeleteHaving sponsors also mean that users would be spammed with the icons/ branding of those companies, and I guess they also need to consider the users' experience in the game. (if the same company's logo keeps appearing, the users might not want to play the game anymore also.)
Just my two cents.