McDonald's Happy Meal App

The challenge

As part of a McDonald's rebranding programme, Preloaded Games asked me to assess the onboarding flow for the Happy Meal app on iOS and Android. The existing experience contained no fewer than fourteen steps before children could reach the games.

The challenge was to remove unnecessary friction without overlooking the permissions, parental involvement and safety considerations inherent in an app designed for children.

User research

I carried out usability testing to understand how children and their parents actually approached setup. Younger children tended to hand the device back to a parent when technical permission screens appeared. Older children were more likely to press whichever button seemed most likely to get them to the game, often without reading the message.

That behaviour could result in permissions being denied and make game content harder to access later. I also reviewed 20 popular children's apps across the App Store and Google Play, where the dominant pattern was much lighter setup, and researched how children physically hold devices so that CTAs and information could be positioned appropriately.

Design

Using the research, I conducted an expert review of every screen in the onboarding journey, identifying specific usability issues and proposing solutions. I then redesigned the flow in Adobe XD, producing wireframes and an interactive prototype that could be reviewed quickly with visual designers and developers.

I also developed and prototyped concepts for the game-selection experience, extending the work beyond onboarding into how children discovered what to play next.

Game selection

The game-select concepts explored ways to make choice visual, immediate and age-appropriate. The aim throughout was to minimise interface overhead and keep attention on the playful content rather than the mechanics of navigating to it.

Result

The redesigned onboarding reduced the journey from fourteen steps to just four, making it substantially easier for children and parents to configure permissions and reach the games quickly.

I also presented McDonald's with a spectrum of implementation options, allowing the team to understand the trade-offs and select the approach that best met user and business needs.