Good Game Native App
- Andrew Walters
- Mar 25, 2021
- 6 min read
My Role: UX Researcher | Duration: 2 Weeks | Project Status: Ongoing Online gaming provides players with many different environments to connect in. Games enable players with new ways to communicate and build connections with people globally. It gives them an outlet and even a way to immerse themselves in many new worlds. Good Game is a native app that connects like-minded players through a matchmaking system.
The Challenge
Gaming lacks the control some users feel they need to fully enjoy the experience. User's find themselves in random lobbies dealing with whatever personality is randomly grouped with them. This can lead to bullying, lack of teamwork, and many other unwanted experiences.
The Solution
We researched the problem space thoroughly to discover the most prominent needs gamers have, ideated solutions to said problem, and designed a feature to assess the need of the Gamers. This is what brought about Good Game, an app for online gamers to connect with like-minded players through filters, common interests, and play styles.
The Path We Took to Get There
RESEARCH
Getting to know Online Gamers
The truth is we are just making an educated guess, but I wouldn’t advise creating a whole service based on a guess. We need to know what users actually need and feel through Field Research. So we set out to learn how gamers truly feel by interviewing 5 online gamers about connecting in random online lobbies, and gaming online in general.
What We Wanted to Learn
• Gamer's general gaming experience
• Gamer's favorite titles and genres
• Gamer's experiences with online lobbies
• What gamers consider their "ideal" teammate
By getting to know gamers personally we can create features they actually need over features we think they need. This is crucial to the design process. We will be able to understand if the product is going to be useful rather than just another game chat.
SYNTHESIS
Putting Gamers in the Crosshairs
Now that we have gotten to know our gamers, it's time to personify our target audience so we can keep all the common trends prominent as we continue through the design process. Meet Maya!
What Users Had to Say • Gamers want the freedom to choose who they share their online gaming experience with. • The experience gamers have is what makes them continue to play games online. • Gamers want to play with people with specific traits. • Gamers enjoy a more casual and positive experience when playing multiplayer games. • Gamers choose which game type they play based on their moods. • Gamers want to play with people they know. • Gamers value an environment that allows them to make connections.
It is our job as UX designers, to find insights within the conversations and point out differences and similarities within the participants. Similarities like gaming based on specific traits, mood, and making connections are exactly what we are looking for when thinking about what our product needs to do.
A Journey of the Online Gamer
This journey map illustrates Maya’s journey when getting home and getting online with friends. We can also see the paths she goes through once her friends get offline and how she deals with finding new teammates.
How They Feel
• We can see gamers need a way to choose their teammates based on stats.
• Gamers need a way to find likeminded teammates.
• Players want to be notified if an action is being taken against a reported player.
The gamers we interviewed, no matter their competitiveness or expertise, all shared experiences about using gaming as a way to make connections and socializing with other people. However, their level of comfort and overall contentment would be hindered by other gamers that crossed the line between competition and toxicity. As a result, Maya does not feel comfortable pairing up with random strangers to play live games.
Creation
Giving Gamers What They Need
The best way to validate our work was to test real working designs. Time to jump into a design studio to get the idea juices flowin’ and sketch out some initial designs.
Gamers want a way to choose their teammates based on stats >> Advanced Filters
Gamers need a way to find like-minded teammates >> Direct Messages, Setting your play style mood
Gamers need a way to have more control over who they game with >> Matching System
Gamers feel there can be a toxic environment when gaming with random people >> Friends List, Profile
Some gamers want to know if action is being taken against a reported player >> Player Report History
From Ideas to Sketches
DESIGN PHASE
Presenting Gamers Our Initial Design
"It looks like it could be fun but I was a little confused at first."
From those sketches, we were able to see a general layout and have an easier time bringing sketches into mid-fi screens. We set out to test our mid-fi wireframes by turning them into a clickable prototype. We found 5 users to run some usability testing, where we were able to look at how a user interacted with the design and flow of the app.
How Users Felt • Participants felt like the status drop downs were not clearly marked as drop downs and had some issues attempting to select their status and the game they were playing • 4 out of 5 participants tried to expand the profile of the suggested players in the results to attempt to find out if they were someone that could help them instead of using Advanced Filter, since there were only two results. • Users did not see the “Advanced Filter” option easily. • Participants had no issues locating how to message a suggested match from the results through the search.
We usability tested the original design to get not only quantitative data but qualitative data too. By getting this information we can see exactly what the current app is expressing to our Gamers.
How it Preformed
After we calculated the results, we found some areas that needed extra attention. The most significant issue was with our advanced filter, participants quickly scanned over it and went straight to the other gamers to try and find the best fit themselves. Secondly, we had a minor issue with our drop down menus for game and play style, which we wanted to adjust to make stand out more.
Breathing Life into the Design
"Wow, this is fun! I could definitely see myself owning this app."
We brought the product to its full-fledged visual design. Adding in full color, typography, imagery, refined copy, and most of the functionality, we arrived at the late stages of design development. A high-fidelity native app design.
How Gamers Felt • Average easiness rating and success rate from round 1 to round 2 saw an increase in results! • Easiness rating of 4.2 >> 4.6 • Success rate INCREASE of 15% • Time on task had no change
Taking into consideration the recommendations from our first round of usability testing, we made adjustments moving into our hi-fi prototype. Once completed we conducted a second round of testing to see if we were able to make improvements, or if we needed to further evaluate the design and features.
How it Preformed
Both the success rate and easiness rating saw increases in results! The overall success rate in round 2 saw a 15% increase! Our overall easiness rating even went up from a 4.2 to a 4.6 star rating! We can conclude from these results that we are definitely on the right path.
IMPLEMENTATION
Product Principles
We really wanted to drive GoodGame through principles that help gamers. We wanted to give gamers the opportunity to expand their circle in a way that is healthy and fun. Users have shown that this can be done by giving them the opportunity to find supportive like-minded teammates. Overall we want to give gamers the power of a choice in who they game with.
Principles • Giving gamers an opportunity to expand their gaming circle • Providing gamers with an environment to connect prior to random online lobbies • Creating a supportive environment for gamers of all experience levels • Providing gamers the freedom to choose teammates with commonalities • Enhancing gameplay communication through a fun, interactive experience
Google Heart Framework
To further understand how GoodGame can improve the user's experience and improve on it, we used Google HEART framework to identify Goals, Signals, and Metrics.
Where to Go from Here
Next Steps From our second round of usability testing, we can conclude that Good Game would be a great fit for gamers looking to have a more enjoyable gaming experience when their friends are not available. Even though we still have some work to do, they are minor and could be improved upon after launch.
Recommendations • Pre-Launch — We believe that Good Game’s Style Guide and Spec doc need to be brought to developers to make this a full-fledged product! • After Launch — The product also needs to be closely tracked and iterated on through key performance indicators, we suggest starting off with utilizing Google Analytics. Finally, we believe Good Game needs to be presented to Steam as a valuable partnership. Good game will bring users into Steam's established community and make steam a valuable place not to just find an awesome game, but to find an awesome friendship. In conclusion, we look forward to working with the development team to take the Good Game mock-up to a real working app.
Reflecting
We can tell from working hand in hand with Online Gamers that Good Game isn't just capable of creating a fun way to link up with other players, but has the potential to better the gaming community in its entirety!
Want to experience Good Game first hand? Free to play around with this prototype as much as you’d like!
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