Crafting 'Live Quiz' from Scratch: A Design-Driven Approach to Organic Growth for Byju's

Role

Associate Product Designer

Industry

Edtech

Duration

4 months

Problem Statement

Byju’s needed new in-app engagement strategies to drive organic growth, reduce reliance on paid installs, and amplify word-of-mouth referrals.

Impact

2000 new users acquired organically within the first two months of launch.
Best Feature Retention as compared to other features in the platform.

Role

Associate Product Designer

Industry

Edtech

Duration

4 months

Problem Statement

Byju’s needed new in-app engagement strategies to drive organic growth, reduce reliance on paid installs, and amplify word-of-mouth referrals.

Impact

2000 new users acquired organically within the first two months of launch.
Best Feature Retention as compared to other features in the platform.

Role

Associate Product Designer

Industry

Edtech

Duration

4 months

Problem Statement

Byju’s needed new in-app engagement strategies to drive organic growth, reduce reliance on paid installs, and amplify word-of-mouth referrals.

Impact

2000 new users acquired organically within the first two months of launch.Best Feature Retention as compared to other features in the platform.

Role

Associate Product Designer

Industry

Edtech

Duration

4 months

Problem Statement

Byju’s needed new in-app engagement strategies to drive organic growth, reduce reliance on paid installs, and amplify word-of-mouth referrals.

Impact

2000 new users acquired organically within the first two months of launch.Best Feature Retention as compared to other features in the platform.

About BYJU'S

Byju’s, India’s leading edtech platform, transforms learning with interactive, personalised digital experiences. It makes education accessible for students of all ages, from school learners to professionals. Here are its key offerings for 4th to 8th graders.

Background

Byju's relied on celebrity endorsements, regional and digital marketing, and word of mouth to drive brand awareness and organic installs. As these channels neared their limits, the focus shifted to in-app engagement to boost organic growth through referrals.

With business expansion, the challenge was sustaining user growth while reducing marketing costs from 8% to 5%. This required identifying new acquisition channels to offset paid installs.

"We want to figure out channels on our app through which students can be engaged and appealed the most. This would help us get more organic installs. "

We want to figure out channels on our app through which students can be engaged and appealed the most. This would help us get more organic installs.

"We want to figure out channels on our app through which students can be engaged and appealed the most. This would help us get more organic installs. "

In-Depth Analysis

Comparing Numbers:

We analysed and compared all the existing features on the BTLA app based on their completion rates.

From this data we got to know that assessment based activities have higher completion rates, thus we should think of expanding in this direction.

Research Insights

This insight can be a key decision-making factor for Byju’s Live Quiz by reinforcing the importance of peer-to-peer interaction in learning.

Since student-to-student engagement is the most prevalent, the quiz can be designed to foster collaboration, competition, and knowledge sharing among students.

Why will it appeal to students?

Competitive analysis

HQ Trivia

Popularity: Started with 14K users and within 6 months engagement reached 1.4M users

Referrals: Over 60% of signups came from referrals

Game Format: Simple game format: 12 MCQ to win prize money. Real host added big game feel and a little ticker at the top letting you know you are competing against hundreds.

Game Rules: Failure to answer a question resulted in elimination unless you redeemed one of your 'lives' and continued - not applicable to final questions.

Loco Quiz

Popularity: 150k-200k people participate daily with a peak of 500k (within a month).

Game Format: Number of questions - 10 MCQ based; Prize money.

Loco Quiz

Popularity: 150k-200k people participate daily with a peak of 500k (within a month).

Game Format: Number of questions - 10 MCQ based; Prize money.

Thus to design and implement the Live Quiz feature as a gamified solution to drive organic user acquisition, enhance engagement, and build brand visibility by fostering social sharing, incentivized referrals, and a competitive learning experience, ultimately reducing marketing costs while maintaining growth.

How we planned on achieving this

Along with making a robust live quizzing platform, we tried making the following possible:

For Adoption Rate:

By introducing daily and weekly rewards program (Extrinsic motivation), students will be lured to play live quiz everyday and the adoption rate will improve for the feature.

For Popularity:

By introducing points system in the game and rewarding students with them for each successful referral, will excite them into referring their friends to the app. These referrals will increase our organic installs.

For Adoption Rate:

By introducing daily and weekly rewards program (Extrinsic motivation), students will be lured to play live quiz everyday and the adoption rate will improve for the feature.

For Popularity:

But can point system alone make the product interesting enough?

While researching other apps, how they are luring users and what made their products popular, I came across psychology behind games ad observed patterns. I inferred that there was a framework that these apps followed : The Three Loops

Core Loop

Meta Loop

Viral Loop

Octalysis Framework for Gamification and Behavioural Design

From the Octalysis Framework, I drew patterns in how psychological drivers influence engagement—encouraging actions like task completion, skill-building, and participation. By applying these principles, I crafted a gamification strategy that enhances user experience and drives meaningful interactions.

Solutions

Pre-Quiz : Discovery Phase

Pre-Quiz : Exploratory Phase

Pre-Quiz : Discovery Phase

Pre quiz is referred to as the time when the user discovers live quiz from the Homepage and explores more about it or play the game depending on the time of the day.

For this a banner was introduced within the home page. I aimed at making the banner stand out, so that it draws the user attention.

We also utilised Scarcity and impatience, the core drive of creating a sense of urgency and excitement. It is about making users feel like they need to act now or miss out

Introduced daily and weekly rewards program (Extrinsic Motivation), which will lure students to play live quiz everyday.

Added elements like intriguing illustrations, social proofing to add validation for the students.

Pre-Quiz : Exploratory Phase

The page is designed to encourage students to set reminders for quiz notifications. Key considerations:

Ensuring new users understand how to play.
Clearly stating weekly rewards to boost motivation.
Providing a progress tracker to encourage consistency.

To address this, the design focused on:

Epic Meaning & Calling: Defining a clear objective to highlight the game's value.
Accomplishment: Providing a sense of progress, mastery, and gratification.
Social Influence & Belonging: Fostering community and connection.
Development & Mastery: Encouraging continuous improvement and leveling up.

During Quiz : Exploring Phase

Waiting room intervention prior to the quiz

To ensure students stayed on the platform, we introduced a waiting room a few minutes before the quiz began. This helped bridge the gap and successfully reduced drop-offs.

During Quiz : Playing the Quiz

While playing the quiz, the experience involved a host putting up questions on screen, with a timer in place. The player needs to mark the correct answer. Post every question, the leaderboard shows up.

Post Quiz : Exploring Phase

Once the game ends, the experience that comes after is referred to as post quiz.

We introduced and after game experience which showed the progress made through out the game, and to provide a bigger picture, we introduced Global and Friend Leaderboard

As shown above, Point system was established throughout the game, and an individual’s personal score was informed at different touch-points to create value for the points and the urge to earn them.

At the end of each week of gameplay, we designed tailored experiences for both winners and participants to highlight their progress and uplift their spirits for the upcoming week.

Insights and Metrics

There are around 2000 users currently playing on the Byjus app (Data as of December 2022).

Approximately 3% lead to sales conversion through this feature (which is highest through any feature on the app).
Better feature retention compared to overall BTLA:

Future Scope

We observed drop-offs due to user frustration with the download and app access process, causing them to lose sight of their initial purpose. To address this, we plan to develop an instant app allowing users to play the quiz without installation, encouraging downloads post-play.
In the long term, product virality will be driven by creating addictive gameplay. Our strategy includes adding boosters, live chat, and clan creation for invited friends to enhance the quiz experience.