I was lucky enough to join the team at VML Australia to work on McDonald's flagship promotion. I designed the user experience for McDonald's Monopoly. Players could unlock rewards by scanning tokens in the app, or play games and win prizes.
McDonald's Monopoly screens
The challenge was to keep people playing while driving prize redemption. So the mobile app had to be intuitive, easy-to-use, and fun to play.
My design process kicked off with a flurry of paper sketches, which I then brought to life with paper prototyping. POP lets you photograph sketches and turn them into an interactive prototype. This helped identify and iron out usability issues before they became serious problems. I could then proceed to creating polished wireframes. I then spent time making sure all gameplay was legal.
Early paper wireframes
The app was native for iOS and Android, with game development in Unity. I put together a detailed user flow so each team could plan development in advance. I mapped out every detail; animations, interactions, server calls, and game logic. From here Andrew, the UI designer, took my work and created the fun and engaging final design.
The result? The McDonald’s Monopoly Game App climbed to #1 on the app store in only 24 hours. Downloads shot up 33%, there were 3 million+ active users, 55 million tickets scanned & over 4 million prizes redeemed - all within 6 weeks. The promotion also doubled McDonald’s Australia's database size. On top of all that, users stayed engaged with an average dwell time of 7 minutes per visit – amazing!