Enhancing Poki’s Mobile Playground
Smart, playful and personalised game discovery.
Poki is a global online gaming platform that gives players instant access to thousands of free games directly in the browser, without the need for downloads or installations. Its playground brings together a wide range of games across genres, making discovery a key part of the overall experience.
The Challenge
Poki’s desktop experience makes it easy to move between games through recommendations and seamless navigation. On mobile, however, discovery was fragmented. Players struggled to find what to play next, often ending their session or leaving the platform.
Poki’s playground was built desktop-first, leaving a critical gap in the mobile player journey. As mobile competition increasingly comes from app stores and instant-play experiences, simply offering easy access was no longer enough.
HMW build a direct relationship with users through discovery?
HMW make discovery a strategic source of data for content growth teams?
HMW push Poki exclusives that have potential to become hits?
The Opportunity
Make Poki a destination for game discovery, a place where users can easily find what they want to play, discover something new, and keep playing.
By improving personalised recommendations, navigation, and the transition between games, discovery could become both a better user experience and a strategic growth engine for Poki.
The Goal of this Case Study
Create a mobile experience that helps players find the right game faster, discover more, and stay playing longer.
Benchmark Analysis
I analyzed leading gaming platforms across mobile and desktop to uncover best practices, friction points, and opportunities in game discovery. The findings helped shape the design principles and opportunities for improving Poki’s mobile experience.
Key Design Insights
The benchmark highlighted four key opportunities for improving Poki’s mobile discovery experience.
• Clear context
A persistent top bar helps users stay oriented, providing a consistent sense of where they are within the platform.
A persistent top bar helps users stay oriented, providing a consistent sense of where they are within the platform.
• Personalised experience
Quick access to favorites creates a more personal gaming journey, making it easier to return to games users already enjoy.
Quick access to favorites creates a more personal gaming journey, making it easier to return to games users already enjoy.
• Smarter discovery
Search can go beyond keywords by connecting gameplay history, related games, and favorites to surface more relevant content.
Search can go beyond keywords by connecting gameplay history, related games, and favorites to surface more relevant content.
• Greater user control
Making search and saved games easily accessible gives users more control over what they play and how they navigate the platform.
Making search and saved games easily accessible gives users more control over what they play and how they navigate the platform.
The Solution
I redesigned Poki’s mobile playground around faster discovery, personalization, and clearer navigation.
A fixed top bar provides quick access to the Poki logo, Favorites, and Search, keeping essential actions within reach throughout the experience.
The homepage introduces a Poki Exclusives section at the top, giving exclusive games greater visibility. Below, users can explore the full game library or browse by category.
I also reorganized the informational content at the bottom of the page into expandable sections, keeping the interface clean while making additional content easy to access when needed.
SEARCH AND FAVORITES
The new search makes game discovery faster and more flexible. Users can search by theme, explore popular games of the week, and discover trending categories through curated tags.
A dedicated card introduces the new Favorites feature, encouraging users to save games they enjoy. Once favorites are established, search also surfaces similar games based on their preferences, creating a more personalised path to continued discovery.
Conclusion
This project showed how thoughtful, user-centered design can transform game discovery into a more seamless, personal, and engaging experience.
By rethinking navigation, personalisation, and content discovery, the redesign aims to make it easier for users to find something they want to play, while creating a stronger and more meaningful relationship between players and Poki.
