The Team
Product Manager, Associate Product Manager, 6 Engineers, 2 Product Designers
My Role as Lead Product Designer
- Create Pika v2 with product managers and designers from scratch
- Mentor new designers through the design process
- Work with product managers to clarify business goals
- Work with product manager and designers to research the related market in Taiwan and China
- Build and create the mobile UI and UX with product manager, designer, and engineers
- Define sticker types, animation, and experience with designers
The Problem
The Pika app paired with the QR code didn’t work as well as we hoped. The effort to download a separate Pika app proved to be too much of a hassle, and people were having trouble scanning the QR code on stream.
Pika V1
The Solution
Try a different method with Pika V2 and create animated stickers that viewers can send to Twitch streams by typing commands directly in the Twitch chat.
User Research in Taiwan
The user research for Pika V2 is built off of the research done in Pika V1. We have the same users but the main user cases have been cut down to the essentials.
Same Target Users from Pika V1: "Taiwan Twitch Viewers and Streamers"
- High school to College students
- Watches or streams to Twitch at least 2-3 times a week
- Uses an Android phone
User Persona
Main Use Cases
- Streamer gets immediate input visually through the stickers viewers send
- Viewer wants to react (cheer, laugh, praise, etc..) to the streamer by sending stickers
MVP Features Cutdown
We simplified the feature list for Pika V2 down to the most important one.
Animated stickers through Twitch commands
Sticker Guidelines Refined
We used the same stickers from Pika V1, except this time we decided to keep it one size. Based on the streamer feedback from V1 we realized we needed to keep these stickers as unobtrusive as possible.
Twitch Commands
We observed several popular Twitch live streams in Taiwan to see what viewers were typing to the streamers in chat. We were able to find that many viewers expressed their reactions by typing numbers like 66666 or 777777. Based on our findings we created an initial list of stickers with popular commands.
!77 and !66 mean "great job", !gg means good game, !qq means "crying", and !87 means "you're terrible".
Workflow for Viewers
With this new method the workflow became significantly condensed. Users are not required to login to an account. They just need to watch a Twitch live stream with Pika and send commands to have their sticker appear.
Initially we kept the stickers in place within an invisible boundary. They would appear for a few seconds at a random spot within this boundary then fade away.
This turned out to be a bit stale and not as engaging as we expected. Then we tried a different method where the stickers would appear from the left and float across the stream then gradually fade away.
Final Iteration
First successful iteration with new sticker animation
This turned out to be much more engaging for the viewers and less intrusive on the streamer’s live stream. By moving the stickers across, it would never block an area of the screen for too long.
What We Learned
The ease of sending stickers through chat commands proved to be much more engaging. These Twitch users were using commands they were already typing, so it was easy for them to pick it up.
Next Steps
Now that Pika is picking up the next steps are figuring out more ways for the viewers to interact with the streamers.
- Profile page for pika viewers
- Pika War a competition between streamers to see who can receive the most stickers
- Mini games on stream for viewers to play
