Lysto (via Pixelcrux)
Increasing Tournament Registrations in a Community led platform with AI
A Game SaaS UX Case Study
Turning Tournament Tracking from Lysto's biggest friction point into a measurable driver of registration and retention, growing active user participation from ~5,000 to 12,000 in the first 3 months post-launch: connecting community hosts with their audiences.
My Role
Design Lead at Pixelcrux UX Design Studio. Lysto was a Pixelcrux Client.
My Team
Led UX including branding, building and guiding a team of 5 designers (client + agency)
Timeline
3 months from design research to production
It started with a message from the PM..
“Rhythm, the Tournament Registrations Rate is 0.7 (70 for every 100 DAU) whereas Tournament Completion Rate is 0.15. Not only are both these numbers very low,
the drop off in between is also significantly high. We need to get more players to play.”
The tournament registration flow was breaking down. Players and hosts were out of sync, missed updates and faced difficulty in tracking critical information. Support tickets were piling up faster than the team could clear them.
Understanding the business
& product strategy
The pressure here was real.
Lysto was operating in a tournament space where the AI driven competitors were gaining traction.
The risk of losing players was too high.
The broken registration flow wasn't just a UX problem, it was a competitive liability.
I studied the competitors
I looked into four platforms shaping the category, Gankster, FACEIT, Drifffle, and Community Gaming,
to understand how they approached the tournament experience and to spot the patterns becoming standard in the market.
Community Gaming
Drifffle
Faceit
Gankster
A few things stood out amongst the competitors:
The differentiator opportunity
Discovery was still clunky.
Matchmaking left no room for players to find teams themselves.
No platform had solved host-player sync.
No platform had a unique brand identity.
No platform had an emotional connect with the users.
My hypothesis was
"If we fix the Tournament Journey experience and the Matchmaking experience for users, the Registration numbers and the Completion Rates will improve." So I did a quick study of our user personas and their journeys:
Persona Study & Pain Points
Persona 1
Hardy
The Tournament Host
Responsibilities
Quick responses to tournament players
Keep them engaged
Keep the tournament stats updated in admin panel
Behaviour
Hardy has multiple whatsapp groups of the different tournaments he hosts.
He personally sends messages in them and responds to players.
He uses Lysto to do the same tasks but the older platform was jarry.
Hates typing and hates using the admin dashboard.
Pain Points
Hardy is tired of the constant queries from players about the Tournament he’s hosting.
Difficult to track user requests
Difficult to always share updates on time
Persona 2
Garry
The Tournament Gamer
Responsibilities
Quick responses to tournament players
Keep them engaged
Keep the tournament stats updated in admin panel
Behaviour
Hardy has multiple whatsapp groups of the different tournaments he hosts.
He personally sends messages in them and responds to players.
He uses Lysto to do the same tasks but the older platform was jarry.
Hates typing and hates using the admin dashboard.
Pain Points
Hardy is tired of the constant queries from players about the Tournament he’s hosting.
Difficult to track user requests
Difficult to always share updates on time
Goals
Move away from Telegram/Whatsapp based system and Design a player friendly tournament tracking system.
Identify all the user entry points and simplify them.
Enable a frictionless tournament registration.
Design an effective connect between hosts & players.
Design a delightful results visualisation system.
These 4 were our key metrics
to measure impact.
Achieved outcomes are shared at the end.
Tournament Completion Rate
Tournament Registrations
Daily Active Users
Tournament related User Queries
Tournament Full Page Interface
Designed as a 4 tab modular layout
for easy segmentation of information and quick switching navigation.
Overview
Tournament high level info like Bio, Roadmap and Game Details
Teams
Confirmed and Waitlisted Teams along with their slots
Results
Team Rankings & Rewards and Victory Snap Interface
News
Announcements & Connect between players and hosts
Spaceman Brand mascot
I created a 'Spaceman' Brand Mascot to bring a fun, sci-fi, gamer-friendly tone that blends with the dark theme
The Spaceman was added to several Empty States, Website banners and other graphics across the platform
Spaceman Brand mascot
I created a 'Spaceman' Brand Mascot to bring a fun, sci-fi, gamer-friendly tone that blends with the dark theme
The Spaceman was added to several Empty States, Website banners and other graphics across the platform
Thank You