LEGO® Star Wars™ Smart Play™

As Associate Play Lead, my responsibility was to make sure our products met the kids' play needs.

I chased our riskiest assumptions and turned findings from 300+ test participants into creative direction and concrete design actions.

In the early phase of the project, the purpose of the research was to discover and ideate on possible creative directions. This was also supported by quantitative data from multiple surveys.

Later, we held 2 large-scale in-home tests to learn about onboarding, retention, and friction points.

And in the development phase, we polished the experience through multiple rounds of A/B usability testing.

I lead our team towards designing a scalable ecosystem of iconic Star Wars moments.

From my research, I identified which key activities kids gravitated towards most and built the assortment and play vision around them. The starship became the central anchor for the adventure, enabling exploration as well as combat, while multiple ships in the range allowed kids to choose their side and stage their own battles.

Kids can also duel with lightsabers, fuel their starships, or even kick back and relax at Mos Eisley's Cantina – With a wide array of activities, kids can put together their own Star Wars story, with them controlling the action.

Finally, I created a framework of "Signature Moments" that our multi-disciplinary implementation team used to stay focused on delivering what kids value most.

This framework distilled key insights from extensive research and testing, highlighting the very moments that spark utmost joy in their play. It served as a single source of truth for the entire development team to rally around and align efforts across disciplines. For example, laser shooting received top priority: If blasting didn't feel super responsive and powerful, we would be letting the users down.