Raffld Winners Box
Designing the Physical UX to enhance the winning experience
Product Case Study
In house at Lottovate - who build, launch and invest in new lottery businesses
Fabian (business project manager)
Black Tomato (external prize agency)
Tracy (freelance graphic designer)
Myself (lead product designer)
Art direction, brand strategy lead
3 month side project to the main Raffld product. With a strict deadline to be ready to order 4 weeks before product launch
Overview
Raffld - the Experience Lottery sends a winners package to winning players to further increase the ‘winning feeling’ by surprising them with a box of goodies. This includes a GoPro to capture their holiday memories when they go on their winning trip.
Objective
Create a 'wow' Unboxing moment
Creating unboxing anything and everything videos has been a constant trend since 2006. Raffld wanted to create a ‘wow’ unboxing moment for their winners in the hope that they would create their own videos and share on social media. Videos from genuine winners showing honest reactions would help raise trust and brand awareness for Raffld as it’s a completely new product in the market.
The Approach
Focussing on the users winners
This project is unusual in that we couldn’t test it on our users (unless we just wanted to give away free stuff - unfortunately not in budget).
However we did put all the focus on the user experience of opening the box, receiving unexpected rewards and reading the bespoke itinerary, with attention to personal touches. All to enhance the winning experience and feeling before going away on their trip.
Kickoff
Defining what's in a Winners Box
Our prize agency were already busy sourcing trips for the Raffld prizes when discussions began regarding what should be included in a winners box along with the trip itinerary.
An experience specific guidebook was later removed due to budget costs and not a wide enough range of books available to cover all prize destinations. A snippet of this type of content was added to the bespoke itinerary instead.
The prototype box included a GoPro 5, a selfie stick, power bank, luggage tag, passport holder, social media card and an A5 internal box containing the trip itinerary.
A black finish on the contents gives a consistent and elegant feel although this is completely off brand and not exciting to look at. The branded items aren’t very recognisable from a photograph. As we want our winners to share images and videos of the ‘unboxing’ on social media it’s vital that the brand stands out.
Embossing the branding on a black box is too subtle and wouldn’t show up well on ‘unboxing’ images/videos on social media. Alternative and cheaper solutions for packaging the contents don’t give the wow factor that’s required.
Main Challenges
Slow Decisions
The main challenge was the large lead times waiting on quotes and samples from suppliers whilst still moving the project forward. It proved vitally important to see and test each product, as a result the original selfie stick was replaced with the GoPole stick as it felt sturdier and like a higher quality product.
To keep track of product and design decisions we used a living document in google drive and a trello board to keep track of print specifications, and final artwork.
The Trello board featured the following board headings:
- To do
- Specs (all supplier specs for reference)
- Decisions Made (containing print colour choices)
- In progress
- Under Review
- Marketing Review
- Finished Artwork
- Reference (to other working documents)
- Questions
All print ready artwork was uploaded to the board to keep everything in one place.
Cost Savings
Less is More
We asked people of our target audience age and Dutch colleagues around the office in case of a difference in cultural behaviour what their thoughts were on passport holders. Many said they found them ‘useless’ and annoying as you have to remove the passport before going through security. Again it wouldn’t add anything to the winning experience by including in the box and could most likely become a cost on an item that might get discarded.
As with the passport holders we considered many options for luggage tags however all options felt quite cheap on close inspection and didn’t seem to add enough to justify the costs.
Removing the passport holder and luggage tag also meant we could order smaller flat pack boxes from Foldabox that made a huge saving as the original box was custom made.
A very small downside is that the ‘off the shelf’ box is deeper than needed adding to the foam costs, however the overall cost saving is huge and only needing 4 cutouts in the foam resulted in a less cluttered look than the original box, this also produced an unexpected option to use 2 colour foam insert. Again this added a extra detail and flourish to the overall effect making a feature of the deep cutouts for tidy leads and straps.
Box Approval
The Finishing Touches
To build upon the anticipation of 'unboxing' I suggested we added a white piece of card below the handwritten letter as the tissue paper is transparent and the goodies can already be seen, as shown in the image below.
The all important
Bespoke Itinerary
The prizes for Raffld's weekly prize draw are experience trips for up to 4 people from the following 4 categories:
- 360° Adventure,
- City All Access,
- Bucketlist Tickets,
- Recharge Break.
The winning group or individual assigns a team leader to liaise with the prize agency the dates they wish to travel. As soon as the booking is finalised a bespoke itinerary booklet is created from the category specific templates. The finished itinerary is added to the box of goodies and sent to the team leader.
The proposed itinerary put forward by Black Tomato contained a lot of useful information but it didn’t have the wow factor, the information felt generic and images were of destinations all over the world that didn’t relate to the trip. Therefore we decided to take it in house and pay close attention to the details, bespoke to each group’s trip with high quality gloss paper and professionally printed for sharp image clarity.
In many ways the itinerary is the most important element in the winner’s box containing:
- The planned journey of the trip.
- Itinerary of what they are doing each day including the special Raffld activity.
- Extra bespoke information about their destination, suggested restaurants and packing tips etc.
- Images of their upcoming trip as seen on the web app to show consistency and familiarity.
- Customised iconography relevant to activities the winners are doing from our icon set.
Our hope is that all the attention to detail in the bespoke itinerary will create something the winners might want to keep as a souvenir. As a result each person in the group receives their own booklet with the added personal touch of their name handwritten on the cover and a hand printed embossed metallic ink “R’ winner” stamp.
Final Product
'Unboxing' User Flow
- Fig 1. - Winner's Box with Raffld Branding printed in blue foil.
- Fig 2. - Magnetic closure for easy opening. White tissue and R' Winner stamp sticker.
- Fig 3. - Handwritten personalised congratulations note from the Raffld Team on top of a piece of white card.
- Fig 4. - The 'goodies' are revealed including a GoPro & GoPole.
- Fig 5. - A5 'Time to Make Memories' box printed in blue foil.
- Fig 6. - Box contains: x4 Itineraries, x4 Raffld Winners Cards, x1 SD memory card for the GoPro.
Final Product
It's All About the Details
Raffld Winners open box of goodies: GoPro, GoPole selfie stick, power bank and itinerary box
The foam insert features two colour lamination with deep cutouts for tidy leads and straps
R' Winner card (front) displaying the R' Winner stamp
R' Winner card (back) displaying social media information
360° Adventure itinerary front cover with embossed R' Winner Stamp
Itinerary flight details page with custom icons and airport code
Itinerary hotel details page and transport icon to destination
Information page including info on the hotel and destination
A list of restaurants to try near the hotel from a range a price points
'Good to know' travel tips and information for trip destination
Packing list tailored to destination and season of travel
Itinerary back page with the more impactful launch tagline
Outcome
Winner Reactions
Everything was delivered on time to be sent to the first Raffld winners after the product launched. I’m really happy we cut some items in order to maintain a high standard, this also helped deliver the box under budget which delighted the financial director.
We had a great reaction from our winners as can be seen in the video below by fightflightfreeze who took 3 mates to Madeira to swim with dolphins in the Atlantic Ocean.
Raffld Winner: Vera, who won a trip to dive between the tectonic plates in Iceland with 3 friends.
On Reflection
Final Thoughts
It was really fun working on this project and very rewarding to see the genuine reactions from winners when they opened the box.
Throughout the entire process it was really important to me to not only consider the brand and keep consistency across every touch point but make our winners to feel as though they were winning something all over again. With a high attention to the smallest details especially in the bespoke itinerary booklets.
One of the biggest learnings from this project is that it’s ok not to settle on something that doesn’t feel right, a better solution can be found, sometimes that better option is to remove it. I found that pushing back on the prize agency to find better products or give a wider range of product price points really paid off in the end even if at times it felt like one step forwards two steps back. Unlike other digital Raffld products, there was no allowance for iteration everything had to be right for the very first winners.