Tim Hortons Hockey Challenge

I had the opportunity to work on the Tim Hortons Hockey Challenge app for three hockey seasons. (years) My role on this project was lead product design, including everything from strategy to UI to motion graphics.

Using the app, Tims Rewards members need to choose three NHL® players who they believe will score a goal that game day. You can win 10 Tims Rewards points for one correct pick, 50 points for two correct picks, and 150 points if all three of their chosen players score.

You set your fantasy lineup for that particular day in hopes that someone from all of the games that day will score a goal. If you’ve correctly guessed at least one player to score during seven consecutive NHL game days, you’ll win FREE coffee for a week.

The goal for this campaign was to drive engagement and usage, drive adoption of the digital transformation and the loyalty program and for Tims to remain competitive among its competition.

The problem

This game was created to be another strategic move to enable adoption of the digital transformation with their customers and to push the Tims Rewards loyalty program narrative. It’s purpose was to continue to associate Tim Hortons with one of Canadians most prized sports, hockey.

How might we deliver an experience that is easy-to-use and allows users to start playing and set their lineups quickly? How might keep users playing and reduce the number of players that drop off from playing, or forget to play? How might we create an experience that creates a sense of competition and camaraderie among others?

Challenge

One of the key challenges of this project was creating an experience that would be engaging, addictive and competitive. The experience needed to be something that would mimic a fantasy sports app — it needed to incentivize users to want to play.

How might we deliver an experience that is easy-to-use and allows users to start playing and set their lineups quickly? How might keep users playing and reduce the number of players that drop off from playing, or forget to play? How might we create an experience that creates a sense of competition and camaraderie among others?

Solution Approach

The solution was an iterative process in which we sent out surveys to determine feature prioritization and ran testing on the usability and overall experience with Tim Hortons employees and a pool of customers.

It was a fine balance of addressing the business goals and objectives, while addressing user pain points and iterating and adding features over time.

Improvements through testing and feedback

Year-over-year, we tested, surveyed and made improvements to the app based on user feedback and business priorities. I’ll do my best to outline some of those more significant improvements below.

Users weren’t being notified to make their daily picks, and would often forget to log their picks and engage with the app. In the second season, we added a notification toggle to the app UI, but we found that this wasn’t enough and was constantly being overlooked. In season #3, we added opting in for notifications in various places throughout the app, and even made it more prominent by asking users to opt-in for notifications during the onboarding process.

From season #1 to season #3, there was a drastic change in giving users an incentive to play. More ways to win, more ways to increase engagement and usage of the game. I worked with stakeholders to ideate on a new method of winning prizes, why not add heat streaks to the mix? If a user correctly guesses at least one of their picks for 7 consecutive days, they win free coffee for a week! This new concept was added to an “Analytics panel” accessible to the user, and would also show up on the new “History” panel in which we keep track of the users correct/incorrect picks, and their associated heat streak.