Nailed It! Baking Bash
Netflix commissioned Paladin Studios (known for Cut the Rope and My Tamagotchi Forever) to create a mobile party game, based on the hit TV series, Nailed It! As Lead UX Designer, I structured the menu systems, ingame UI, and managed the UI development team.
The Challenge
Nailed It! is one of Netflix’s most watched TV shows, now in its 7th series.
“Home bakers with a terrible track record take a crack at re-creating edible masterpieces for a $10,000 prize. It's part reality contest, part hot mess.”
Netflix wanted to create an accompanying mobile app that family and friends could play together. The UX was key - it had to be accessible for all kinds of players, from little kids to grandmas.
While Paladin is an established studio, they didn’t have an in-house UX Designer, so needed a specialist to help shape not only the game, but also install best practice across the company.
The Process
I undertook multiple processes and tasks over my time on the game. Including:
Leading a UX/UI cross-disciplinary team
Developing UX strategy for the game
Creating player personas
Building out player flows for single and multiplayer modes
Creating mockups for the UI artist to develop
Developing prototypes to demonstrate transitions and button states
Introducing right-sized UX best practices that included thorough design documentation and inter-disciplinary communication
Conducting playtests and player research, analysing collated data, and making informed design decisions
See below for more detail on these processes.
User Personas
I created detailed user personas for the game to make sure we were designing with real players in mind. I ran surveys, interviews, and dug into gameplay data to understand different types of players: from relaxed, social gamers to super competitive achievers.
These personas helped shape everything from the core game mechanics to the UI and onboarding experience. By keeping these different player needs front and centre, we were able to build a game that felt fun, intuitive, and genuinely engaging for everyone.
Game Map and User Flows
The game is both single and multiplayer, so was slightly more complex than other standard mobile games. I mapped out the full game structure and user flows to make sure every part of the experience felt clear and intuitive.
I started by sketching out the big-picture game map, making sure content and features were easy to find and logically organized.
Then I designed detailed user flows to guide people smoothly from their first tap all the way to the various minigames and results. This helped us spot any confusing steps early on and keep everything focused on what players actually needed, creating a journey that felt effortless and engaging.
Playtests
We carried out a series of playtests with both single and multiplayer modes. The multiplayer mode was complex to set up as it requires all players to be in the same room. I drafted in several friend groups and families (for us to test the real-life dynamics between family members and friends playing together). We gained some really interesting feedback on the gameplay and also some confusion around the voting sequence which follows the gameplay.
Before carrying out the user tests, I set up some hypotheses to test. These enabled me to create a set of questions to ask during testing. Below is an example of those hypotheses:
Pre-production User Testing: Multiplayer
Host/Contestant screens, Lobby, Location and Baking Challenge Intro, Minigame Intro, HUD, Pause Menu, Reactions, Voting, Results
Discoverable/Usable:
Players will understand the idea of hosting a party
Players will understand that they must tell the other players in the room the emoji code
Players will understand the idea of a lobby
Players will be able to discover how to ask for help and change their settings.
Players will understand there are different minigames that make up a single baking challenge.
Players will understand the minigame instructions.
Players will connect the minigame instructions to the HUD and understand what the main HUD components do.
Players will understand the purpose of the buttons in the pause menu and return to gameplay.
Players will discover how to react to the video results
Players will discover how to vote for their favourite results
Players will understand the results screen - who won and what the scores were
Expectations:
Players will expect that choosing to host the game will mean they are in control of starting the game
Players will expect the baking challenge to be where the gameplay exists.
Players will expect the help button to provide them with a way to find help.
Players will expect the settings button to display settings options.
Players will expect each baking challenge to have more than one minigame.
Players will expect the minigame instructions to match the gameplay.
Players will expect the HUD to provide useful information.
Players will not expect there to be a pause button
Players will expect the emoji reactions to pop up
Players will expect the scores on the voting hats to go towards the result
The Result
The game launched in 2022 to some rave reviews. It also helped kick start Netflix’s mobile game arm - which had only been officially launched a few months prior. Unfortunately, Paladin Studios shut down in 2024, so the game is no longer supported and players now have logging in issues. We’ll just have to get our Nailed It kicks on the telly.