RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE SUPERSTAR

TOOT AND BOOT CASE STUDY

Role: Lead UX Designer

Skills Used: Management, User Research, Market Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, Implementation, AB Testing, Live Ops

RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar is an award winning mobile game developed in 2020. The game features the contestants and stars of Hit Show RuPaul’s Drag Race. The game primarily features a Challenge gameplay, where player’s can battle against the AI in fashion challenges, and an Idle component where players can upgrade their workstations in order to earn more “Werk”. Live Ops in the game is still ongoing.

Challenge

Players lacked meaningful social interaction while completing challenges.

As the game evolved, players consistently expressed a desire for richer social features beyond dressing up and battling AI, seeking stronger community connections and competitive experiences.

Business Goals

Increase customer Retention

Discover new Revenue streams

Looking to find ways to keep players from continuing to find things to do the game.

Looking to find ways for our players to spend more money in the game.

Introduction

I was brought on at the inception of the Toot and Boot feature, which aimed to introduce a community-driven challenge system aligned with our existing gameplay. Inspired by the “Toot and Boot” segment from RuPaul’s Drag Race, where two Queens critique contestant’s looks, the feature allowed players to vote on each other's outfits. As the UX Designer, I led the end-to-end design of the Toot and Boot experience: user flows, wireframes, UI design, playtesting, iteration, and engineering handoff.

The entire feature was split between 4 milestones:

  1. Milestone 1 (2 Weeks) - Build wireframes and a prototype for how a player would interact with the feature.

  2. Milestone 2 (1 Weeks) - Iterate on the wireframes and the prototype based off of initial feedback from the Internal playtesters.

  3. Milestone 3 (1 Weeks) - Skinning and theme the UI of the feature.

  4. Milestone 4 (1 Month) - Implementing the feature

Milestone 1 - Defining the Feature

During this milestone I was tasked with creating a cohesive set of screens and user flows for the Toot and Boot Challenge. The goal was to support the full player journey, including:

  1. Enter a Toot and Boot Challenge

  2. Dress up their Queen (Player Avatar) to fit the theme of the challenge.

  3. Submit their outfit.

  4. Vote on other Queen’s outfits based on the theme of the challenge.

  5. An area where the player could purchase unique clothing pieces with the currency they acquire from completing the Challenges.

  6. An area where the player could collect prizes from meeting voting requirements.

  7. The visual design needed to distinguish the feature from other in-game challenges while maintaining consistency with the overall Toot and Boot theme.

To ensure a consistent user experience, I designed the entry into Toot and Boot to mirror the existing Dress Up Challenges, since both features were accessed from the same area on the Home Screen.

Proposed Updated Toot and Boot Wardrobe

Existing Wardrobe in Game

To streamline navigation and reduce cognitive load, I introduced a centralized Hub where players could access the store, vote, and collect rewards. Rather than dropping players directly into the voting screen after dressing up, which felt abrupt, I used the Hub as a grounding point to help orient players and give them control over their next action.

Proposed Toot and Boot Hub

The store entry within the Hub was intentionally placed in the same location as it appeared in the pre-Hub dressing room. This decision was driven by a desire to maintain spatial consistency across experiences, helping players build a reliable mental model of where key features live. By preserving familiar placement, I aimed to reduce confusion and reinforce intuitive navigation.

For the voting, I designed a swipe-based voting UI, leveraging familiar mobile gestures for intuitive interaction. This introduced a new mechanic to the game while keeping the experience intuitive. Since voting was a new feature, I wanted to ground it in a behavior that many users already associate with decision-making, especially those familiar with dating apps. This approach helped reduce onboarding friction and made the feature feel familiar, while also adding a tactile and engaging layer to the gameplay.

Proposed Toot and Boot Voting Screen

At this stage, I aligned with the engineering team to ensure the voting feature was technically feasible. One problem I raised was that early players might not have any content to vote on, since the system would initially lack submissions. To prevent empty voting states at launch, I proposed a conditional unlock once a submission threshold was met. The engineers and I collaborated on a mini prototype to make sure that this was possible.

Milestone 2 - Shaping the Feature

Internal playtesting revealed strong player interest in the new challenge format. Many enjoyed voting on other players’ outfits and felt motivated by seeing their own entries receive high scores. However, several usability and emotional pain points surfaced that were not anticipated during initial design. Some testers struggled to judge outfits without a comparison, making the act of "Booting" feel uncomfortable. This introduced emotional friction that impacted the overall experience. The swipe-based voting also received mixed feedback; while familiar to some, many players were unfamiliar with the gesture and found it confusing.

On the positive side, players responded well once they discovered that voting earned rewards.

In response to early feedback, I collaborated with the Game Designer in a Design Workshop and together we proposed a key change to the voting mechanic: shifting from binary judgments to comparative decisions. Instead of asking players to rate an outfit as good or bad, they now voted between two options based on which better fit the theme. This design adjustment reframed the player experience by shifting focus from negative outcomes to positive reinforcement. By minimizing emotional discomfort and emphasizing optimism, it encouraged players to engage with the game through a more constructive and rewarding mindset.

On the UX side, we replaced the swipe gesture with clearly labeled buttons. This simplified the interaction and addressed confusion among players unfamiliar with swipe-based controls. By allowing users to click the outfit they preferred, we lowered cognitive load and improved accessibility. The new interface also aligned more closely with the overall UI, enhancing consistency and ease of use.

To reinforce engagement and provide immediate feedback, I added a widget that appears on screen after the player submits a vote. This widget only appears after the player has voted and communicates progress toward earning a reward and helps players feel their actions have impact. For consistency, I placed it in the same location as other in-game widgets, ensuring it aligned with established UI patterns and didn’t disrupt the player’s visual flow.

Updated Proposed Voting Gameplay

Milestone 3 - Colouring the Feature

After completing the initial iteration phase, I transitioned into designing the high-fidelity UI for the Toot and Boot feature. My primary goal was to ensure visual and experiential cohesion throughout the interface, reinforcing to players that they were consistently within the same feature environment. By adhering to the Style Guide established early in the game design process in collaboration with the Art Director, we were able to streamline the high-fidelity design phase. The predefined visual language and design principles ensured consistency across UI elements and accelerated decision-making, allowing us to complete this stage efficiently without compromising quality.

Proposed Toot and Boot Wardrobe

Final Toot and Boot Wardrobe

Proposed Toot and Boot Hub

Final Toot and Boot Hub

Proposed Toot and Boot Voting

Final Toot and Boot Voting

We crafted a unified icon set to support intuitive player actions and reinforce the feature’s core loop. Players spend a Toot Ticket to cast a vote (Toot), and upon completing the challenge, they earn additional Toot Currency. This design choice helped us keep a sustained, self-contained ecosystem that encouraged continued engagement.

Milestone 4 - Building the Feature

The final month on this feature was spent working with Engineers to build the feature. I was responsible for creating all the Views, Overlays and Prefabs that the feature had within Unity. Once I had set these up, I passed them over to the Engineers for them to set up functionality.

Takeaways

Impact and Player Reception 

Toot and Boot quickly emerged as one of the most beloved features in the game. Players engaged with it daily, proudly sharing their outfit creations across community platforms such as Discord and Reddit. The feature not only deepened social connection within the player base but also played a key role in boosting retention and driving revenue.

  • Active players prior to Toot and Boot Feature spent roughly 45 minutes a day on the game.

  • Active players post Toot and Boot Feature spent roughly 1 hour 25 minutes a day on the game, an increase of 40 minutes, almost double what they did before.

*Active player metric determined by those who login everyday post day 8 in-game