Matt McMillan

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Viximo

Viximo was a VC backed startup exploring the idea of using virtual gifts as a way to create engagement and increase revenue across social applications.

Role
Creative Director
Years
2008–2012
Two Viximo T-shirt designs, in navy and gray, with the Viximo V logo

The products we built at Viximo ranged from embeddable widgets to iOS applications and even some social games of our own design. As Creative Director, I designed across all of it, art directed freelance designers and internal artists, and did a lot of the front end coding myself.

Groom Your Dawg pet game: dressing a dog with a tie and sunglasses from a shelf of accessories

Virtual gifts inside other people’s networks

The core idea was simple: let people give each other virtual gifts, and let the network keep the engagement and the revenue. Our apps lived inside social networks, and I hand coded HTML and CSS to help each large network customize Viximo’s content to fit its own look and feel.

Viximo website home page: “The easiest way to drive revenue and engagement with virtual goods and currency”

A Gift Shop inside a social network, with a grid of virtual gifts, a points balance, and a Powered by Viximo footer

An Add Credits dialog offering five credit packages, from 500 credits for $3 to 20,000 for $50, with a limited time bonus

Left: a Gift Shop. Right: buying credits, with a limited time bonus offer during the 2010 World Cup.

Games of our own

We also made social games ourselves. Poker had a lobby of rooms with stakes, a list of friends who were online, and a table with dealer chat. Dawgz was a pet game where you could shop, groom, and give gifts to your friends’ dogs.

A poker lobby with a list of rooms and stakes, and a Friends Online list with an Invite Friends to Play button

A poker table with community cards, a Winner banner, dealer chat, and Call, Fold, and Raise buttons

A multiplayer poker table with seven seats, chat, and betting controls

Poker: the lobby, a winning hand, and a full table.

The Dawgz home screen with a large dog in a tie and sunglasses, friends’ dogs with speech bubbles, and Shop, Groom, and Give buttons

Dawgz: a home screen with friends’ dogs, and buttons to shop, groom, and give.

There were photo games too, where players traded and collected photos of their friends.

Snap Me Up on Facebook: a photo the player just won, with a tip about mojo

Own Your Friends game with a Buy Now button under a profile photo

Two of the photo games: Snap Me Up on Facebook, and Own Your Friends.

Social Zone

Social Zone was a social layer that games could plug into. Players could find friends from Facebook, Google+, Twitter, or their contacts, message them, and see which games their friends were playing.

Social Zone welcome screen on a phone, inviting the player to find friends

Social Zone Add Your Friends screen listing Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and the address book

Social Zone Recommended Games screen with the number of friends playing each game

Social Zone on a phone: welcome, adding friends, and recommended games.

Social Zone landing page: “Unlock your app’s social potential”

The Social Zone landing page.

iPhone, and everything else

I was one of the first wave of designers building for iPhone, shipping a string of one-off apps during the ninety-nine cent gold rush of the early App Store, alongside web and social game design.

VixML landing page: “This way to iPhone awesomeness”

Viximo T-shirt with a blue V logo

Left: the landing page for VixML. Right: Viximo T-shirts.

Viximo T-shirt design