Universal Studios Backlot Club
A location-based mobile experience designed for Universal Parks, connecting real-world theme park visits with digital progression, rewards, and ongoing fan engagement beyond the gates.
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problem
Elevating the Universal Parks experience meant designing something that could sit seamlessly on top of a physical visit without competing with it. Guests move through the park in different ways (families, thrill seekers, and superfans), each with a distinct pattern of attention and motivation. The challenge was creating a single platform that could gamify the park experience for all of them, while also building meaningful engagement that extended well past the moment they left the park.
solution
Working through Forward Studio, we designed Backlot Club, a phygital fan engagement platform that layers a persistent game world on top of Universal Parks. Guests complete location-based quests tied to real spots throughout the park, earning collectibles and rewards that feed into a seasonal, evolving progression system. The system was also built to keep fans connected after they went home, creating a path for Universal to re-engage audiences and build richer consumer profiles for loyalty and remarketing.
I was the experience designer on the Forward Studio team working with Universal, responsible for the core systems architecture and player flow that connected physical park activity to digital progression and rewards.
Early in development, the team visited the park to study guest behavior and mobile habits. We noticed consistent patterns in how visitors used their phones, often checking them while waiting in lines, resting in shaded areas, or eating lunch. These moments of downtime became our opportunity space. By designing quests that fit naturally into these rhythms, Backlot Club could engage players without interrupting their visit.
To support longevity, I developed a flexible systems framework that could host seasonal events, rotating collectibles, and limited-time challenges without overhauling the structure. This gave Universal the ability to evolve the experience in step with the parks calendar while maintaining consistency and clarity for returning players.
All virtual rewards earned through Backlot Club were built on the Aptos blockchain in partnership with Aptos Labs, making every collectible a genuinely owned digital asset. Designing with that in mind shaped how we thought about reward permanence and scarcity from the start; each reward was something the guests could keep indefinitely, giving collections real meaning beyond a single visit. The seasonal content and on-chain collectibles gave guests a reason to return to the app between visits: pursue collection sets, complete challenges, climb the leaderboards, and anticipate what the next park event would unlock.
I created detailed system documentation to align Forward Studio's creative, UX, and technical teams alongside Universal's internal partners. My focus throughout was balancing fan delight with business objectives, ensuring every system served both the player experience and Universal's broader engagement and loyalty goals
Backlot Club debuted at Halloween Horror Nights 2025, launching simultaneously at Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood. Guests explored both parks collecting digital medallions tied to haunted houses and scare zones, with rewards including on-chain digital collectibles and limited-edition physical trading cards redeemable in-park.
see also
