TCA Finance, finance is not just about bitcoins
Trading Card Alert Finance App
I imagine that many of the readers may not know the world of Trading Cards. It sounds like a pastime, which it is, and childish, after all it is a game, but behind these card games for the table, there is a big industry, and it is still a dance between two good strategists like in chess, but with more variety of pieces and moves. This is the reason why many adults are attracted to these games, you need wit and strategy. The most famous trading card games are: Pokemon, Yugi-oh and Magics: The Gathering. We will talk about the latter, Magic: The Gathering.
In the world of Magics (Magic: The Gathering), there are several components that decide the economic value of a card:
- The state the card is in.
- The amount of cards on the market in good condition.
- The card’s abilities and synergy with other cards to reach possible winning plays.
- The illustration or the type of printing of the card, which depends on the expansion or event in question for which the card is created.
These characteristics cause, in several occasions, that some cards reach exorbitant prices in the buying and selling market. As well as, it also turns the game into a potential investment market, since the cards can not only increase their economic value but also plummet, because they are reedited, better cards appear to replace the functionality or ability or they have been directly banned in some game formats.
And with this in mind, let’s get started!
Research and development
Time to develop the project 11 days, plus a revision of the visual part. This project was done by myself.
As mentioned above, for various reasons the price of cards rise and fall constantly, and this leads to many players have headaches and want to be aware of these ups and downs, especially those cards that expect to buy or sell at some point. A few hours difference and a price can rise or fall by as much as 50% of its original price. In other words, a card can go from costing 50€ to 25€ in less than 24H and vice versa. For this reason, the TCA Finance project has been conceptualized, a system of alerts of price increases and decreases of the cards that you want to follow on the market. This makes it easier for players to access and control the market for the desired cards.
After some user research through interviews and surveys, I was able to make an empathy map to clarify concepts and ideas raised and so I got to our user persona and their user journey.
Having the user and the objective clear, I made a moscow to make the project even tighter, and an analysis of the competition, in this case, the closest thing to a competition in Spain would be Card Market.
Design
After making a LOW-FI prototype and testing it, I started with the aesthetics of the mobile app.
As you can see in the moodboard, I used a lot of blue-green colors, since blue represents calm, confidence and technology, from a marketing point of view, and I applied some green to make it at the same time fresh and new. Besides, this color has a good contrast for legibility with clear and clean tones, which would be necessary and important for the graphics and filters later on.
I didn’t want to introduce another additional color either, since the cards already have character and intense colors, so they already gain prominence. These cards are the queens of our app, they should not be detracted from or overshadowed.
HI-FI Prototype
For this prototype we have to put ourselves in the shoes of a Magics player with guest access to the app. This time we are looking for new cards to invest, so we don’t have any specific card in mind.
As our intention is to invest, we are going to look at restricted or forbidden cards of the moderm format, where we will find the card “Mystic stoneforge”. This card catches our attention, so we look at it.
Being an interesting card we decide to see its price. This card exists in several different expansions, we want to see the price of the third expansion starting from the left and that it is in perfect condition.
We apply the filters, and see the results. Finally, we create an alert in case it drops to the price we want.
Functionalities and monetization
This mobile application was born as an alert system for Magics card prices, that is, it is an MVP.
The next steps would be the online store, where you can centralize your actions of buying and selling cards exclusively, integration with Google Maps, to locate the stores quickly and even allow an online purchase with in-store pickup, and the option to sign up for tournaments without having to move.
What have I learned?
Of course this project has been a mega challenge for me, but I went for it.
I have realized how complicated it is sometimes to make certain decisions, especially when you have to sacrifice features or little things that can be useful to the user and you will never know if you don’t try it.
I also had my little internal war between aesthetics and usability, which delayed me a lot in the development and made me tweak part of the project.
