DAILY
TOSS UP
デイリー・トスアップ — ウィール・オブ・フォーチュン
Feature design for a daily puzzle mode and streak-based retention system embedded inside Wheel of Fortune, Volley Games' voice-interactive CTV experience. The Daily Toss Up gives players a reason to come back every day — without a single push notification.
01 // Context
THE ASK
コンテキスト — なぜ作るのか
Wheel of Fortune on Volley is a voice-interactive living room game — played on a TV via a smart speaker, with your phone as the controller. It's casual, social, and intentionally low-commitment. The problem: once someone finishes a game session, there's no obvious hook to bring them back tomorrow.
Traditional mobile retention tools (push notifications, badges, email loops) don't map to this platform the same way. We needed something native to the game loop itself — a reason to want to come back, not just a reminder that we exist. The Daily Toss Up had to feel like a gift, not a task; something you'd actually miss if you skipped it.
Design Objectives
01
Daily Retention
Build a simple daily habit that feels rewarding — a quick puzzle that resets every 24 hours and keeps players excited for the next one.
02
Shareability
Give players a natural, frictionless way to share results with friends and family. A little friendly comparison goes a long way in a living-room game.
03
Low Friction
Jump in and play. No tutorials required. Quick enough for any moment in the day, with a voice interaction model that fits the existing platform.
02 // Discovery
DESIGN THINKING
デザイン発見 — 目標の地図
Before touching any UI, I mapped the problem space in a FigJam board — identifying key goals, retention mechanics to explore, and the constraints unique to a voice-first, living-room platform. I wanted to stress-test what "daily engagement" could actually mean here before designing a single screen.
The discovery work surfaced four main feature directions: a tiered streak system, time-based challenges, daily theme changes, and earned hints. Not all shipped in v1 — but knowing what the system could grow into shaped every constraint I set on the initial design.
03 // The System
STREAK DESIGN
ストリーク設計 — 継続のメカニクス
Progressive Streak Tiers
Streaks aren't just a counter — they're the engine. At 7, 14, and 30-day milestones, the game unlocks small but celebratory rewards: unique animations, color scheme variants, and special victory sounds. The goal is to give the impression of progression beyond the puzzle itself.
Achievement Categories
Performance isn't one-dimensional. I designed a set of named achievement tiers — Genius, Brainiac, Mastermind, Quick Witted, Puzzle Virtuoso, Persistent — each with a distinct character illustration and animation. What you're called after solving a puzzle changes based on how fast you solved it and how long your streak is.
Frictionless Sharing
Post-puzzle, players see a shareable card on their phone — their solve time, their streak, their achievement title. One tap to share. The copy invites comparison ("How did you do?") without requiring the other person to have the game installed.
Streak-Protective Loss State
When you run out of time, the game doesn't punish you — it reassures you. "You ran out of time, but your streak is intact. Try again tomorrow, you got this!" This was a deliberate narrative design choice: protect motivation, reduce frustration, and keep the daily habit from feeling fragile.
04 // Screens
05 // Achievement System
10+ TIERS OF WIN
実績システム — あなたは誰？
One of the more delightful pieces of the system: post-solve, you don't just get a score. You get a title. Brainiac. Mastermind. Quick Witted. Puzzle Virtuoso.
Each tier has its own character animation — a small celebration moment that makes winning feel personal. The achievement system rewards both speed and consistency, not just raw puzzle-solving ability, which means a casual daily player on a 30-day streak can still earn something a fast-but-inconsistent player can't.
The time thresholds for each tier were deliberately left unspecified at handoff. Calibrating “Genius” against an arbitrary number would have been a guess — the right cutoffs depend on the actual distribution of solve times across real players. What the design locked in was the hierarchy and the labels; the values themselves are a tuning problem for post-launch, once there's data to tell you where the median sits and what “fast” actually means for this audience.
06 // Design Constraint
VOICE-FIRST MEANS RETHINKING EVERYTHING
ボイスファースト — 違う設計思想
The Wheel of Fortune Volley game lives in your living room speaker and TV — you don't type, tap, or scroll. You hold a button and speak. This constraint shapes everything downstream: the QR code pairing flow, the mobile companion UX, the instruction copy ("Press and hold OK to say your answer"), and the way the puzzle board reveals letters in response to speech input.
The Daily Toss Up had to honor that model completely. No in-app notifications to prompt a return visit — just the hope that the streak counter would do the work. And the loss-state message, designed to feel like a gentle coach rather than a mechanical failure screen: "Your streak is intact. Try again tomorrow, you got this."
The two-screen experience (TV + phone) also meant designing for split attention. The mobile companion handles input and sharing; the TV handles the spectacle. Every transition between the two had to feel seamless — you scan the QR code once at game start, then forget the phone exists until you're ready to share your result.
07 // Outcomes
SHIPPED
出荷済み — 結果と振り返り
The Daily Toss Up shipped as a live feature in the Wheel of Fortune Volley experience. The full design scope included: the puzzle reveal flow across 8 progressive states, the QR-based phone pairing system, 10+ achievement tier illustrations and copy, the streak display system visible throughout gameplay, and the mobile share card.
The streak-protective loss state — "your streak is intact" — was a deliberate narrative design choice that came directly from the discovery work. It reframes a failed puzzle as a reason to return, not a reason to disengage.
Full CTV user flow
Loading → Game Select → QR Connect → Puzzle (8 states) → Result → Share
Mobile companion
Phone input, mic permission, win/lose screens, shareable result card
10+ achievement tiers
Named characters with distinct illustrations, animations, and copy
Design system documentation
Streak mechanic specs, feature proposal boards, component library
Case Study
DAILY TOSS UP