Mattel + Hot Wheels

The 4.8 Star App I made.

My job is to work with the Hot Wheels Advanced Play team - we make digitally connected toys for the older boy - the ones that graduate out of Hot Wheels around age 6.

I became the expert at an age bracket unfamiliar to Mattel. Over the first year, I began to drive a new way of thinking across 3 areas - testing, behavior, and UI direction.

I brought user centered design research to their Consumer Insights group, taught Barbie’s Future Play team how to design for the user-first.

I designed 3 connected toy experiences nominated for Toy of The Year. Hot Wheels id was the largest investment in Mattel’s history.

From Start to Finish

I started with sketches alone help solidify one’s own thinking.

I consistently facilitated creative workshop at the whiteboard helping the team understand, together.

I then brought a scaled down wireframe flow to capture functionality needs.

I finally managed the UI team to brand, scale, and design a system around Hot Wheels id.

Where id Started

I traveled to the UK to accomplish two things:

Show our team how to scale the initial thinking for the game so it can grow with our ecosystem.
Show how to run a proper user-centered creative workshop

These wireframes jump started the game in terms of functionality.

The Entire Game

PROBLEM: Make a game for 8+, but fun for adults who love Hot Wheels.

SOLUTION: I created diggable depth. This is not so uncommon among game thinking. Users need easy things and complex things. Easy things make games fun because feeling successful is a great intrinsic value. Complexity or depth is a great aspect too because it’s the only way to Mastery.

INSIGHT: It’s difficult to educate a large organization why complexity even for children is a great design choice. But as you can see - it worked. 4.8 star review is a great score for my first product launch at Mattel.

First Impressions

The homepage needed to be scalable, but not cluttered.

I categorized features so when features were added to the game, the homescreen iterations could minimize the impact of change on the user.

Dynamic Play

Not only did I want the UI to imitate the toy (a feel of plastic), but to provide a constant reminder that the Hot Wheels toy is the most important means to fun. This is a business priority, but an intrinsic value for our users.

Collect cars like you collect cards

PROBLEM: There are a lot of cars, which ones are best?

SOLUTION: Make kids obsessed with their favorite cars by making their collection tangible - they look real.

Showing Off

PROBLEM: How can a user see how great their cars are?

SOLUTION: Elevate the information they want. Through testing 100% of kids want to know how fast and how many wins. I also wanted to continue making our app look like a toy.

Techmods

The first RC game system that you build, drive, and play.

If the toy does two things - how does one make both things fun - driving and gaming?

That was my problem to solve. What I created was a mixed play experience where the rewards in one game affected the player’s experience in the other. They depended on each other.

An example is Shields. Shields were used in the digital game, when the car was a controller. A player couldn’t buy any shields unless they drove around in Treasure Hunt mode in search of coins. Coins in the physical = Shields in the digital.

TechMods Building

Imagine the difficultly for a 6 year old’s hand to put a toy together then learn to play games with it.

That’s what I led. 4 usability tests, video tutorials, and a large nation wide beta test to make sure my game was fun and kids could put this toy together by themselves.

Augmoto

Take a set from 1970 and remake it with technology. That’s Augmoto.

I was tasked with turning a 40 year old product into something older boys would think it came from the future.

There are several huge design problems to solve with AR. Once is size of area to play and the other is control of the toy WHILE using a screen.

I solved this by making sure the physical toy needed attention while the digital game needed attention at specific moments. This allowed a kid to concentrate on the race as they needed vs. when I was telling them to.

Augmoto Simple Controls

I needed to give the screen more space for cool FX and keep the interactions low. So two thumb buttons and “at-a-glance” UI elements let the kid concentrate on whatever part of the game play they needed.

This was tricky. I led 4 rounds of testing with kids.

Action Cam - A PROTOTYPE

The product everyone wants but no one knows if they’ll use it. This was my insight.

Everyone loves the idea of a POV from their Hot Wheels car. But making videos is another story.

I led the application design referencing apps kids already use - Snapchat and iMovie.

Through testing and focus groups, I learned what was most significant to the kid when making videos vs. what Hot Wheels wanted to be important. Thus, steering the app to be about fun sharable content with mom and not YouTube.