A free game for Digital Gold: guess the gold price, win real gold — a full campaign brief that never launched.
Company
Digikala
Role
Marketer
Type
Concept · Growth
Industry
Fintech · digital gold · campaign design
Team
One Figma page: a 27-slide brief and phone mock-ups
Tools
Figma
The problem
Online gold platforms sell at almost the same price, so the price gives nobody a reason to choose one or to come back and look.
The role
Designed the whole campaign: the idea, the rules, the mock-ups and the 27-slide brief.
The result
A finished brief that never launched: Digikala did not have the developers to build it.
Figure 01
Figure 01The game on a phone: the buy form with a Submit guess button, the pop-up on the app’s home screen and a story that asks the gold price.
01Context
A price every platform shares
Digital Gold is where Digikala sells gold and silver from one milligram. Sina worked on it as a designer and a marketer, and the product has its own study. This one is about a campaign for it that was designed in full and never built.
The brief starts from a plain fact about the market: online gold platforms differ very little in price. A game that makes people look at Digikala’s price again and again would turn the platform into the place they check, and bring in new buyers without heavy advertising.
Figure 02The feeling the game is built for: a card for a called price and the line “See, I told you so!” The painting is an AI-generated image.
02Problem
Three jobs for one game
The framework slide gives the campaign one goal: win new users and raise the number of gold transactions. The benefits slide adds two more: make Digikala’s gold price the reference people look at, and learn about users, since a guess shows a person’s feel for the market and how much risk they will take.
The audience is people who like a little financial fun without risk. The slide puts it as public interest in gold-price swings plus a wish for low-risk financial entertainment.
The game asks for attention first and a purchase second.
03Approach
Borrow a hook, then make it repeat
The brief leans on one reference: a Thai bank’s campaign, UOB’s Hui Carat, which turned gold investing into a price-prediction game for young people. Players guessed a future price without paying real money and earned points and prizes. The slide takes four lessons from it: entertainment in finance, synergy with social networks, easy entry and investment education.
Digital Gold’s version changes the prize and the rhythm. The prize is real gold, credited to the player’s wallet, and the game has no expiry, so it can run several times a year. A framework slide then lines the idea up as strategy, creative, operations and measurement, with the measures it would be judged on: guesses made, social engagement and user-made content; the share of players who buy and the cost of winning a user; day-7 retention; and the share who reach five grams.
Figure 03The reference campaign and its four lessons.
Figure 04The campaign framework: strategy, creative, operations and measurement.
How the brief fits together
01
ReferenceA Thai bank’s gold-price guessing game, read for four lessons
02
FrameworkStrategy, creative, operations and measurement on one slide
04Solution
Guess the price, win real gold
A player chooses a horizon — today, the end of the week or the end of the month — and types the price they expect. Beginners start with the daily guess for a quick thrill; experienced players take weekly or monthly guesses for more risk and a bigger reward. Entering is free.
A guess is only accepted within 10% of the current price, so jokes and spam stay out. A guess wins when it lands inside an accuracy band: 0.7% for the daily guess, 1.5% for the weekly one, 3% for the monthly one. The bands widen and narrow with the market, so the game stays winnable, and the rule fits in one line: be within 0.7% and you win.
Prizes come in steps. Gold: inside the band, the full prize. Silver: inside twice the band, half the prize. Bronze: the right direction, up or down, a small reward. The prize is real gold, in milligrams or grams.
Figure 05The four game mechanics: time horizon, accuracy bands, input range and tiered reward.
A Digikala story asks the gold price, over the live buy screen.
The buy form takes the guess: a Submit guess button in place of Buy.
A pop-up on the app’s home screen invites the player to guess.
05Reach
Players carry it for you
Each guess can become a story card: “My guess”, a price and a date. The deck pictures the card as a share image that mirrors the player, the way a music app’s year-in-review cards do, and gives winners a line to post: “See, I told you so!” A hashtag and success-share cards are meant to turn players into messengers.
Digikala’s own places give the first wave of attention: a banner on the home page, a push and an in-app notification, a pop-up in the app and a banner on the DigiClub missions page. Finance influencers give the second wave.
Figure 07Where the game meets players inside Digikala: the app’s pop-up, the DigiClub missions page and a story. The painting is AI-generated.
06Drives
Eight motivations, two written out
The gamification slides go through eight motivations in turn: meaning, progress and achievement, creativity and feedback, ownership, social influence, scarcity and impatience, unpredictability and curiosity, loss and avoidance.
Two are written out. Meaning: players feel able to foresee financial markets, learn how markets behave, and belong to a group through weekly and monthly leaderboards of the best forecasters. Progress: a checklist from sign-up to first guess, a progress bar, the player’s rank and error shown the moment the price is announced, and a top-accuracy medal.
The other six slides repeat the second one’s paragraph under new headings: the structure was settled, the writing was not.
07Key decisions
Five decisions behind the game
Each one is visible in the brief or in the mock-ups.
01
Make it free to play
The brief asks for free entry plus a chance at prizes, the same shape as the reference campaign, where players risked no real money. Free entry lets a newcomer try the game before trusting the platform.
Trade-off
A free game has to earn back the cost of its prizes from the buyers it brings in, and the brief’s budget slide is empty.
02
Put the guess on the buy form
The guess screen is the Digital Gold buy form with a Submit guess button, and the story shows the live buy screen behind its question. The idea and the product share one screen, so a guess is one step from a purchase.
Trade-off
A player who only wants to guess still lands on a screen built for buying.
03
Keep the game winnable as the market moves
The accuracy bands widen and narrow with volatility, so the game stays winnable in a calm week and in a wild one. The rule players read stays one line.
08My role
Sina’s part
Listed from the file and from Sina’s own account. The brief names no one else.
Owned
↳The idea and the name: Goldadamus, from gold and Nostradamus
↳The game: horizons, accuracy bands, input range and prize tiers
↳The 27-slide brief, from the reference campaign to the open points
↳The mock-ups: a story, a buy form with a guess button and an app pop-up
↳The look of the brief, with AI-made images for the painting and the icons
Co-owned
—
Collaborated
↳Digikala’s developers, whose capacity decided that it was never built
The painting and the 3D icons were made with AI image tools; the file does not say which. Budget, prizes and the technical build were left for later.
09Open points
What was left open
The last content slide lists what the brief could not yet answer: the exact prediction rules, how a winner is picked and prizes are handed out, what the build needs in developer time, and when a first version could ship; the tone of the story, badges, streaks and the leaderboard; the cost ceiling, the prize tiers and the return on investment; and the mix and timing of the channels.
Four slides hold little more than a title: the winner groups, the user journey, the budget and the targets.
The app pop-up still reads “one guess for every 20,000 toman bought”; the brief, and Sina, say entry is free.
Figure 08What the brief leaves open: rules, narrative, budget and channels.
10Outcomes
A brief, not a launch
The game was never built or launched: Digikala did not have the developers to build it. What exists is the whole concept, on paper and on phone screens.
slides in the brief
27
From a reference campaign to the open points
Delivered output
mock-ups
4
Two stories, a buy form and an app pop-up
Delivered output
game mechanics
4
Time horizon, accuracy bands, input range and tiered reward
Delivered output
What was delivered
↳A 27-slide campaign brief
↳Four game mechanics with accuracy bands and prize tiers
↳Story, buy-form and app pop-up mock-ups
↳A list of open points for the build
11What I learned
What I’d change
01
Write the rule once
The brief and Sina say the game is free; the pop-up mock-up still says one guess per 20,000 toman bought. A rule shown two ways gets built the wrong way round, or not at all.
02
Fill the slides that size the build
The winner groups, the journey, the budget and the targets hold a title and little else. Those are the slides that would have said what the game costs and what it must earn, and a team short of developers needed them most.
03
Design the first version for the team you have
The game stopped for lack of developers. A first version with one daily guess on the existing buy form would have been smaller to build than the whole brief, and would have started the learning.
RulesFour mechanics: time horizon, accuracy bands, input range and tiered reward
04
Mock-upsA story, a buy form with a guess button and an app pop-up
05
Open pointsA list of what is undecided, and four slides with little more than a title
The player’s own story shows the guess and its date.
Figure 06From a story to a guess. The profile photo and name in the last mock-up are hidden.
Trade-off
A band that moves is harder to explain than a fixed number, and the cost of prizes moves with it.
04
Refuse guesses far from the price
The field accepts only guesses within 10% of the current price. That keeps out spam and silly numbers and keeps the contest fair between players.
Trade-off
A player with a strong view of a crash or a jump cannot say so.
05
Pay for the right direction too
Three prize tiers mean a guess that misses the band can still earn something if it called up or down correctly, so a near miss still feels like a result.
Trade-off
Three tiers are three prizes to fund, and the brief sets no prize budget.
