Electronic Arts / Maxis studios / The Sims 4

Bringing bundling to the EA app

Helping Sims players bundle and save on Sims 4 content with the Build Your Own Bundle page.

Role
UX design, UX research
Team
EA app team

How might we improve on the tried and true?

In 2020, as my first project as a new hire, I had the opportunity to lead design for a new feature that we were bringing into the EA desktop application.

Our team wanted to bring over an existing Origin feature; ensure that the feature would continue to flourish, while looking into areas of improvement from an experience standpoint.

Try out the live page on the EA app - now available on PC!

What is B.Y.O.B (Build Your Own Bundle)?

BYOB offers a discount on purchases

The Sims Build Your Own Bundle (BYOB) is a feature that was originally created for the Origin app and website to allow players to create and customize 2 kinds of bundles and get them at a discount:

  1. A Sims Expansion pack, Game pack, and Stuff pack at a discounted price if they already owned The Sims 4
  2. The Sims game and an Expansion pack if they did not already own The Sims 4

Learning what our players know

In order to determine our approach to the new design (if one was needed), I collaborated with our team's UX researcher to develop a research plan. We decided to conduct a series of unstructured user interviews with Sims 4 players to gauge the current sentiment around BYOB and to see how players have interacted with DLC and BYOB in the past.

Based on my understanding of the feature at the time, I defined 3 primary questions for us to answer through these interviews:

  1. What kind of player purchases packs and/or bundles?
  2. Why do players purchase packs and/or bundles?
  3. Do players understand the value of the bundles (ie. the difference between packs and why purchasing through BYOB saves more than individually)?

Learnings

Based on the interview, we learned 3 key insights:

1. Discoverability

There was a lack of awareness around the BYOB feature in Origin because it was hard to find

Sims players and the friends they interacted with about Sims didn’t know about BYOB and even had trouble finding the feature in Origin when told about it. One participant who was a self-proclaimed Sims player wasn’t even aware of it, and had trouble finding it in the Sims product page and Origin sub navigation menus.

2. Value

The functionality and value proposition provided by the feature is appealing to Sims players

Value for money was incredibly important to Sims 4 players. Players mentioned how important price was for them and finding the best value so they were very interested to hear that this feature existed.

3. Recommendations

Discovery of and purchasing decisions for the packs are influenced by others’ recommendations

Players said how they were very much influenced by people telling them about the certain DLC or seeing gameplay of people playing the game. One of the participants that we spoke to watches a lot of YouTube video reviewers and noted that seeing those videos would spark their interest to actually go to the EA or Origin page for the sims to learn more about a new pack.

Helping players discover bundling

Based on the interviews, we started working on new points of entry that addressed discoverability, with the objective of improving awareness, conversion rate and revenue made for that content through BYOB.

Additional entry points in the user flows for users to discover the BYOB page

Addressing discovery with new points of entry

By leveraging existing areas in the app, we were able to add new ways to showcase BYOB that provided natural entry points to the page.

Wireframes created to simulate each of the new proposed flows

It's (a)Live!

Check out the latest live version of the Build Your Own Bundle page on the EA app beta, currently available on PC.

Short preview of the live page