Youzer: The UX Card Game That Turned Research Into Play
How a gamified learning tool helped clients understand user research value and generated new business for our agency
I created a UX-focused card game designed as both a teaching aid and presentation tool. The aim was to build familiarity with how research feeds into finished products and demonstrate how different types of activities work together to provide a more complete picture of a project’s context.
(Project: London, 2019)
The Challenge
“I need to show our organisation what UX can do for us.”
As Experience Director (2019), I was regularly approached by product managers who understood the benefits of user research but struggled to evangelise its value to colleagues.
An opportunity arose when we needed to create something engaging for a UX expo—something that would demonstrate our knowledge of UX principles whilst aligning with key client objectives.
Research
“What can we do to help our clients sell us to their organisations”
After exploring various options and consulting with account managers and clients, we identified a critical disconnect: businesses understood the strategic value they sought, but couldn’t see how research would help them achieve those aims.
Analysis
“Let’s create a tool to answer common UX questions”
Working closely with clients and our agency’s account management teams, we identified four key principles to communicate:
- Understanding what answers UX activity provides aligns our agency’s value with client needs
- Certain research activities need to be iterated to demonstrate their benefit
- Different activities deliver greater value in specific contexts
- Each activity has distinct properties in terms of insight, time, and cost
Solutions
“Creating an interface that learns from Editorial Experts”
We developed a card game using four key product types as suits: Product Development, App Creation, E-commerce Solutions, and CRM Products.
I designed several game variants that could be played with the same deck:
- A card-ranking game where players won by comparing card strengths (e.g., ‘Ethnography’, Insight: 9)
- A strategic UX planning game where players built research plans from suits (e.g., App Creation) that could affect hand values
- An open-plan strategic game where players created plans that ‘battled’ with or against opponents
The aim across all variants was to familiarise people with user research concepts. After brainstorming, we named the game ‘Youzer’.
In professional contexts, the cards served as visual aids for:
- Sales support, enabling account managers to demonstrate the agency’s range of options and help clients tailor a starting plan
- Building user research plans collaboratively with clients
- Creating rough roadmaps of user experience activities
- Explaining which research activities were important, why they mattered, and what they would deliver
Realisation
“This is fun”
The cards proved popular with clients. As a promotional tool, they were highly effective—generating new business whilst demonstrating our commitment as an agency to research-led solutions.