Turning
data
into
delight
The Discussion
WishTender has always championed its top performing users. The most popular "wishers" are constantly promoting on social media, working to earn their spots in the hall of fame, and always screenshotting and sharing it when they rank up. This is a great source of promo for the site, and it only made sense for us to improve the visuals of what they're screenshotting.
Power users don't just exist in a vacuum: oftentimes they belong to a community. The top-performing communities were showcased.
From hover modals to the playful monthly notification that ends up in everyone's inbox, the team crafted every detail with love and respect for users' efforts and privacy.
Users are always asking for an end-of-year summary: for a lot of them, this is their day job and they wanted their own performance review! So why not give it in the form of what they love, a fun graphic to be shared on socials?
I worked with our founder to fine-tune the conditions for each "archetype" or "card personality" that we would generate, and how best to respect the gifter's privacy in all of this too.
*gifters refer to the people who grant wishes - the good folks sending money.
We've made so many features that highlight the wishers, and the gifters needed their flowers too.
The conversation around gifters comes with their own design challenges. In the findom world, people who send money are anonymous in one way or another. But it doesn't mean they're all nameless entities - many have personas or some kind of digital presence. Part of what they do for the wishers, and what gets them going is showing off their effort. In this case, it's the money spent.
It must have been a conversation around collectibles and Pokemon cards that this idea came about for me and the team - why not make a digital collectible for the gifters? Each wisher that they send money to could be their own Pokemon, the tamagotchi that they put effort into. And there's nothing our users love more than images that they can send to each other - to brag, to offer as a form of worship.
In the designs I focused on making the badges aesthetically similar to trading cards, yet vibrant with our brand image and colours. Making the wishers' avatars front and center was a focal point: the gifters maybe faceless, but they worship the wishers' very faces. We also needed to differentiate between the people who have an account with us and who use the site without, and respect the privacy decisions within that.