Discord
App Feature / Personal
Empowering players to discover and launch games easily, with Lobbies
Discord players struggle to coordinate game sessions, while game studio partners lack distribution for players to discover their games. I led the research, definition, and design of a new feature that reduces player friction, improves platform stickiness, and increases partnership ROI.
App
Growth
End-to-End
Personal Project
Project Overview
Problem
Players face significant friction in coordinating games with friends, while Partner Studios lack distribution and engagement metrics
Discord, with over 200M monthly active users (90% of whom play games), is rapidly shifting from a communication tool to a gaming distribution hub. Partner studios are key to this transformation, but two major friction points threaten progress:
Players struggle with game session coordination, often taking 10+ minutes or abandoning sessions altogether.
Studios lack reliable ways to distribute games, surface discovery in-platform, and track conversions from Discord to gameplay.
Goal
Improve player retention and partner studio title engagement by:
Improving game discovery of partner studio titles
Reducing coordination time from minutes to seconds
Delivering analytics to studios showing conversion and engagement ROI
Solution
Lobbies turn Discord chats into instant game sessions
Players create a Lobby for a partner game directly inside Discord
Friends join with one click from a DM, server channel, or activity feed
Everyone launches into the same in-game lobby instantly
Studios receive analytics tracking the full journey from Discord to gameplay
Key benefits:
Frictionless coordination, no juggling invites, platforms, or manual setup
Built-in discovery, Lobby tiles promote partner studio games in relevant chats
Actionable insights, developers see precise engagement and conversion metrics
Lobbies creation flow
Lobbies traffic drives gameplay conversions, displayed in studio analytics dashboard
Lobbies in Direct Messages
Projected impact
+95%
Improved task efficiency, cutting coordination time from 10+ minutes to under 30 seconds.
Process Highlights
Research
Players are spending over 10 minutes, on average, to coordinate game sessions with their friends, and discovering games to play off-platform
Interview snippets and survey data
Define
Creating a problem and goal statement guided ideation and solution development
Brainstorming ideas and personas
Journey
Mapping a player's journey through the leading solutions, identifying the most seamless pathway from conversation to gameplay
User journeys mapped for various concepts
User testing
5 players tested the designs and helped inform iterations to improve usability
User testing brief and script
Early iterations exploring varying interaction and visual treatments