Jimi Jam: making a share of gold worth coming back for

Connect the reward to participation

I proposed distributing the gold according to participants’ accumulated points, with streaks supporting continued participation. More points would mean a larger share of the one-kilogram prize pool.

The intention was to give users a connection between their actions and their reward. Instead of asking them only to enter a draw and wait, the campaign gave them something they could keep building through participation.

That changed the design problem. We now needed to explain how to earn points, what those points meant, and why it was worth returning. The landing page introduced that relationship as three steps: play every day, earn points, and turn those points into gold.

Give late arrivals a reason to begin

A cumulative competition creates a second problem. Someone who joins later sees participants who have already had time to build their scores. The same progress that motivates an existing player can make a newcomer feel that they have missed their chance.

We introduced a welcome spinner to give new arrivals an initial boost and encourage them to enter the competition. Its role was to make starting feel worthwhile, even after the campaign was underway.

This added a distinct purpose to the onboarding experience. The core model rewarded continued participation; the welcome spinner addressed the hesitation of people arriving behind the leaders. We did not assume that the same incentive would work equally well at both moments.

Launch the core and improve it in phases

The first release brought the campaign and the new Footpump game into the product. We launched the landing page and an initial version of the home screen, establishing the participation experience before expanding how we communicated its value.

We chose a phased approach because the campaign deadline and the game launch were competing for the same design capacity. The home screen then became a central part of the work: it was where returning participants checked their progress and where new arrivals needed to understand what to do first.

Three releases structured the rollout. The opening version established the campaign. On 30 Khordad, we made the gold value more explicit. On 10 Tir, we revised the messaging and expanded what users could see in the leaderboard.

Show what the points are worth

In the 30 Khordad release, we added the gold amount in soot, a local unit for small quantities of gold. A banner that had said “Play and win one kilo of gold” became a display of the user’s current share of the prize pool. We also changed the score label from “points” to “share of gold.”

The distinction mattered because points describe progress inside a system. Gold describes the reason someone might want to participate in that system. Showing the amount connected those two meanings more directly.

The game dashboards show a change in activity around this release, including an increase in Footpump play volume. This was an encouraging signal for making the reward more tangible. The charts record daily activity, however, so they cannot separate the effect of this change from other campaign activity happening at the same time.

Make the first action easier to understand

The 10 Tir release brought the current share into focus as a value in tomans. Below it, the message became “Play and get a share of gold,” the next game’s reward was visible, and the game cards carried explicit “Start game” actions.

For a new user, the page needed to make several ideas connect: there was a shared gold prize, participation built points, and those points affected their share. The first game needed to feel like a clear next step within that explanation. The page now put the value, the reward for continuing, and the action closer together.

Following this release, the reported signup-to-first-game conversion rate reached 85%, a 40% relative increase over the earlier rate.

This was the most direct activation signal in the project. The activity dashboards also show higher participation across several behaviours around the release period, giving us a broader view of the change in engagement.

Put value beside rank

The 10 Tir release also changed the leaderboard. Previously, it showed participants’ points. We added the monetary value of their current campaign share, making the stakes visible alongside the ranking.

A score could tell a user who was ahead. A value in tomans helped explain why that position mattered. The leaderboard became another place where the campaign’s reward model could be understood through a concrete example.

This change and the home-screen update were released together. Their combined timing is relevant when reading the results: we could observe what changed after the release, but could not assign a separate conversion effect to each component.

Connect the programme to the competition

We also gave the campaign a place inside the programme, using the leaderboard to show the competition and a QR code to give viewers a route into it. The broadcast entry design repeated the one-kilogram prize and the message that playing could earn a share.

This carried the campaign beyond the app’s own entry points. The programme gave the competition visibility; the QR code provided a route to participate. The design connected audience attention with a concrete next action.

What changed during the campaign

More than 700,000 people engaged with Jimi Jam across the campaign, according to the campaign account. That is an overall participation result, separate from the conversion improvement measured for new arrivals.

The clearest lesson from the releases was that making the reward understandable was part of activation. Designing the points model created a reason to participate; showing its value and explaining the first step helped users act on it.

What I took from Jimi Jam

This project connected product ownership with design leadership. I helped change how the prize would be distributed, considered how the competition would feel to late arrivals, and led a phased interface rollout under a fixed campaign deadline.

The decisions worked at different levels: the reward model gave participation a purpose, the welcome spinner supported entry, and the home screen and leaderboard made the value easier to understand. Improving one level did not remove the need to design the others.

For a campaign lasting several weeks, the work continued after launch. Each release was an opportunity to make the same underlying promise clearer: what a user could do now, and how that participation related to their share of the prize.