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Content Shortage Solution

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Role

Product Designer

Teams

UX, PM, Engineering, Content

Duration

5 Weeks

Platforms

Mobile, Tablet

Plus Challenges is a feature designed to keep top users engaged after finishing all available content. It unlocks personalized archived content, extending gameplay without extra production cost.

TL;DR

PROBLEM

Our most engaged users were churning because of content shortage.

Once users completed all available content, they had little reason to return. Creating more content at scale wasn’t realistic, since it required significant time and cost.

Captured from official FB community.

SOLUTION

Plus Challenges: a personalized way to unlock archived content

We built a system that unlocked older content once users ran out of live content. The main task was making the ux feel exclusive and personalized within the existing product.

Redesigned Live Challenges and Plus Challenges

RESULTS

9.7% increase in WAU, 12% increase in average revenue per DAU.

Personalized in-game items and extra content were highly appreciated by users. The feature drove a noticeable increase in weekly active users and average revenue per daily active user.

BACKGROUND

Garden Joy is a mobile design game where users create outdoor spaces by completing Live Challenges.

In Garden Joy, users decorate outdoor scenes using themed item catalogs, then submit their designs to earn rewards.

PROBLEM

We are losing our most engaged users due to content shortage.

Once users ran out of content, they had no reason to return. This led to declining engagement, reduced spending, and eventual churn among our most valuable users.

We needed a way to keep them engaged without overwhelming our art team and content team or compromising the curated experience that defines Garden Joy.

12% of our weekly active users were completing every available Live Challenge. They accounted for over 50% of our revenue.

Users lack motivation to stay engaged until new Challenges become available.

User feedback has highlighted concerns about content shortage.

CONSTRAINTS

Scaling Challenge production wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t strategic either.

Each Challenge requires handcrafted art and curation. Even at full capacity, a single artist produces only 1 to 2 Challenges per day. Scaling content would have meant a major increase in workforce and cost, which the art team and leadership opposed.

And even if we could scale, the risk was clear: we didn’t yet know if users wanted significantly more content. We needed a smarter, leaner solution.

How might we deliver scalable, high quality content to our most engaged users without increasing production costs?

This question became the foundation of the feature.

Each Challenge is carefully crafted, making production time-consuming and costly.

PROPOSED SOLUTION

We introduced Plus Challenges: a dynamic system that unlocks archived Challenges only when users run out of new ones.

We called the feature Plus Challenges, a new tier of content that felt personalized and infinite.

I created early mocks to test the concept with our UXR team, focusing on validating usability and intent to engage before moving into refinement.

3 key UX decisions →

Earned access

Live Challenges remain the main focus of gameplay. Plus Challenges are unlocked only after all Live Challenges have been completed.

Limited visibility

Plus Challenges is not visible until unlocked. Only 3 Plus Challenges shown at a time to avoid overload.

Elevated UI

Plus Challenges needed to stand out without disrupting the existing UI; it's a new system but within the existing core loop.

Early concept sketches help clarify what the “earned access” ux could look like.

Early feature mock focuses on preserving Live Challenges as the core experience by locking Plus Challenges below them.

RESEARCH & VALIDATION

User testing confirmed that the idea was compelling, but only if it felt premium and rewarding.

We tested early prototypes with users across three segments: capped, near capped, and others:

  • 76% of capped users said they would complete all or most Plus Challenges

  • 49% of near capped users expressed the same intent, showing potential to increase Challenge completion

  • Even among “other” users, over 70% indicated interest in engaging with Plus content

    However, the insight that shaped our direction was qualitative:

“I would love this, but only if it feels exclusive, not just a way to recycle old content.”

That sentiment became the direction of the next refinement.

ITERATION

We focused on every refinement to make Plus Challenges feel special, not secondary.

We gave Plus Challenges a slightly different look to help them stand out and feel more special, using subtle gradients and a locked state to hint that they were premium.

I worked closely with the content team to market the feature as a premium experience designed for highly engaged users.

Challenge Tile exploration.

Dark palettes often signal premium products. The Plus Challenges feed adopts this look to deliver an elevated experience.

TRADEOFFS

Using archived content meant sacrificing seasonal trends, but we turned it into a personalization advantage.

Surfacing old Challenges meant that some wouldn’t match current events or weather - a summer-themed Challenge might appear in winter.

To minimize this tradeoff →

Backend filtering

The Global Challenge Pool will be regularly updated and consist of previously run Challenges that are still relevant and compatible with the current environment.

User-tailored content

The system will identify challenges from the global pool that the user has not completed. Only these Challenges will be added to the user's feed.

Personalized in-app purchase →

We extended this personalization to monetization. Each Plus Challenge surfaced tailored premium items that had previously expired. Since the feed varied per user, so did the store items, making each experience feel more curated and exclusive.

This feature later impacted our roadmap, we began using the same personalization system in regular Live Challenges.

We turned content limitations into opportunities with personalized, exclusive items.

FINAL DESIGN

RESULTS & IMPACT

Significant gains in engagement, playtime, and revenue with zero added production cost.
+12% increase in ARPDAU

Plus Challenges in the first 5 weeks saw a large increase in average revenue per daily active user.

0.5 more Challenge submitted per user per day on average

Capped users submitted 2-3 additional Challenges per day.

+9.7% weekly engagement

Play days per week increased from 4.8 to over 5.25 days.

Positive feedback from users:

“I’ve been waiting for something like this. It makes the game feel alive again.”

“The Plus Challenges are my favorite part of the game now.”

The system required no additional content production, and delivered strong results across engagement, retention, and monetization.

We saw a strong, positive response from the official Garden Joy community on Facebook post launch!

REFLECTION

This project taught me how to drive high impact through systems thinking, not surface changes.

The hardest part was creating a feature that didn’t change much visually but still had a big impact on how people played and on the business. I had to think carefully about every part of the UX, making sure it stayed simple while still feeling fresh.

What I’m most proud of is the rare win-win outcome. Users wanted to enjoy more content, the business needed to increase revenue. Plus Challenges delivered both.

It reminded me that great product design isn’t about what’s new. It’s about delivering what’s meaningful!

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leonho

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© 2026 Leon Ho v4

leonho

leonliho1011@gmail.com

Home
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About
Resume

leonho

leonliho1011@gmail.com

© 2026 Leon Ho v4