Kanga was a mobile & web app that allows you to follow video game streamers across platforms so you never miss a stream or piece of content!
Kanga was acquired by Riot Games in 2021.
Getting Started
In early 2019, I joined the team at Kanga to help them build the future of stream watching. Being a fan of gaming for most of my life but not a stream watcher, the problem resonated with me. How could we make it easier to navigate the ocean of gaming related content—especially that of a livestream variety?
Towards the middle of 2019, we launched the first version of Kanga as a computer vision powered livestream directory of Twitch.tv and Mixer. For the first time ever, you could see what was going on in-game without ever opening the livestream, making it much easier to find something to watch.
With over 1,500 users in the first week, we observed poor retention right away. In talking to our users, we learned people struggled to keep up with their favorite streamers beyond livestreams alone.
We decided to explore improving our value based on this.
Market
Gaming & esports enthusiasts
Men and women between 13 and 35
Active on many social media platforms
Team
5 Engineers
2 Designers
Responsibilities
Interface Design
Experience Design
User Research
Product Strategy
Agile Planning
Growth & Marketing
Building Kanga 2.0
After interviewing dozens of users and sending out over 1,000 research surveys, we collected our findings and started the process of designing the next iteration of Kanga.
As lead designer on a small team, my role here included writing specifications for the new product, determining visual style, and creating multiple user journeys—like those needed for user onboarding.
Over the course of a few months working in 2-week agile sprints, we completed the build of a mobile and web app for the new Kanga product.
Building ideas for growth
During our exploration into improving the Kanga platform, we recognized an opportunity for our product to behave as a super-charged LinkTree for streamers.
After researching needs from content creators, we decided to build a dedicated portal for content creators to manage and customize their pages.
This ended up being a great tool for getting our product in front of consumers—as demonstrated by Emiru’s Twitter link—without using paid advertising.
The Results
The redesigned Kanga app for web and mobile as performed significantly better than our original flash-in-the-pan Chrome extension.
There were many challenges in this development, but the biggest learning that helped us improve quickly was looking at stakeholders beyond our audience to gain marketshare—such as the experience and tools we built for content creators to connect with fans better.
All in all, it was very positive seeing content creators use their profiles to promote their content across platforms and surprising to see the volume of traffic generated by links on social media.
In the numbers
Over 75K Visitors in the first 3 months
45% of traffic via social
$0.00 Spent on ads or promotion
2% of visitors create an account
+15% to 30-day retention
Acquisition by Riot Games
In the Spring of 2021, myself and the Kanga team approached Riot Games with our product suite looking to partner up to enhance esports livestream experiences for fans. After sharing our pitch of what we wanted to do with their esports APIs, Riot Games saw acquiring our team and technology to be more advantageous!
Later in the Summer, myself and the rest of the Kanga team joined Riot Games to expand their Esports Digital department—doubling the team size overnight!