Personal Project

Checkpoint

Product Design

UX Research

Checkpoint is a video game cataloguing and networking app designed for gamers to explore and keep track of their gaming needs. In this app, users can explore games history, catalog completed games, and keep track of their personal gaming habits and compare it with their friends.

ROLE

User Researcher, UX/UI Designer

TIMELINE

Apr. - Jun. 2020

TOOLS

Pen & paper, Sketch, Figma, Invision

THE PROBLEM SPACE

The video game industry is amongst the largest growing entertainment fields in modern times. From the years of 2018-2019 over 17,000 game titles were added to the games distribution platform Steam. In that same time frame, Steam also hosted as many as 18.51 million concurrent users, having tripled that value since 2013.

This explosive growth in development and accessibility has however created a problem, the market is over-saturated. Gamers are finding it difficult to find games that don’t already have a massive marketing push; and even when they do explore the games marketplace, there is little assurance on quality and whether a game suits their tastes in the first place.

“I’m just not sure if that game is something I’d enjoy, and its too expensive to try”

These difficulties combined with the comparatively high costs of entry have resulted in a games exploration experience that is daunting, challenging, and unrewarding; making gamers less inclined to branch out from their set games and to explore their own personal gaming interests.

GOAL AND OBJECTIVES

The goal of this project is to design a digital solution that allows gamers to comfortably explore and learn about their gaming interests.

USER INTERVIEW INSIGHTS

To better define user pain point and needs, I conducted user interviews to better explore the thought process and behaviours of gamers. I interviewed 7 active gamers from multiple walks of life ranging from a middle school student to a 38 year old mother regarding their gaming habits and decision making when choosing games. From here I was able to distill my findings into actionable pain points, motivations, and behaviours

THE DESIGN QUESTION

How might we provide gamers a unified platform to explore and manage their personal and social gaming interests?

PERSONA DEVELOPMENT

After synthesizing the interview findings into actionable insights, I needed to better define my target user and empathize with them on their pain points, goals, and experiences. To that end, I developed a range of personas based on the personality traits and behaviours I noticed during my interviews.

EXPERIENCE MAP

While developing the personas had helped me connect and empathised with user needs and requirements, I still needed to visualize their frustrations and pain points within the current experience of games exploration. To accomplish this, I created an experience map that highlighted the emotional journey and thought processes of the user.

USER STORIES AND TASK SELECTION

From the opportunities and pain-points ascertained from the persona and experience map exercises, it was clear to me that there was alot of space for intervention and improvement within the games exploration problem. My next course of action was therefore to convert these opportunities into user stories which would serve as the basis for the solution’s features and functionalities.

With the user stories fleshed out, I then needed to refine the project scope and focus on core tasks and themes. To that end I selected the epic that beast fit the pain points described in my research, and summarised that epic by selecting the 2 stories that best reflect the user journey as my primary and secondary tasks.

MAIN EPIC

Information Awareness
& Tracking

Primary Task

Searching and saving a game for later purchase

Secondary Task

Exploring analytics to find out most played genre

MVP TASK FLOW

With my primary and secondary tasks set, my next steps were now to flesh out and visualize the project scope. I developed a task diagram that identifies and maps out the projected user journey of the final solution.

SKETCHES & WIREFRAMES

With my task flow mapped out, my next step was to flesh out the visual concepts for my application and to validate those design decisions through iterative testing. To start, I drew rough concept sketches for my application which I then converted into digital wireframes for easier testing.

USER TESTING FINDINGS & IMPROVEMENTS

To validate and ensure strong usability, I performed 3 rounds of usability tests where I interviewed and assessed 5 people as they performed the primary and secondary tasks. From these user tests, I was able to refine my design to be more intuitive while maintaining the visual hierarchy of my solution. The diagrams below highlight some of the major findings and subsequent adjustments found during user testing.

VISUAL DESIGN

After validating my design decisions, my final goal was then to develop and implement the visual design language. I started by generating a moodboard that focused on key themes I wanted to instill. Such as: moody, comfortable, and techy.

Moody

Comfortable

Technological

From my moodboard, I extracted a dark themed colour palette and implemented it on my designs. I also developed a wordmark and logo that I believe would fit the theme and purpose of the product. Once I had injected my chosen colour palette, I connected all my screens into an interactive prototype while making sure to integrate navigational animations for further accessibility and clarity.

Logo and Wordmark

Retrospective

While these 8 weeks were undoubtedly challenging and pushed me in ways I didn’t anticipate, it was a rewarding and educational experience that I wouldn’t hesitate to repeat again. By being the sole designer and researcher for the entire project, I was exposed to the principles of design led thinking and learned several key points that I would hold on for the rest of my design journey.

WHAT ARE YOU SOLVING FOR?

The foundation for any good design is problem solving, and I learned from this project that I needed to root my design thinking to directly solving user needs. I entered this project with several ideas that I believed would change the way users explored games, but during my research and testing I found out that users didn’t want game time trackers or device guides; not because they were bad ideas but because they didn’t solve their problem of bad exploration.

WHEN YOU FAIL, TRY AGAIN

Chances are, the first design you make will never be perfect. I learned that the key to creating the perfect design is to continually and consistently validate and check them against users and against new parameters.

All in all, while I am incredibly proud of the work I accomplished in this short time-span, I fully acknowledge that there is huge room for improvement and refinement. Given more time, I would’ve loved to iterate my designs further before beginning colour and branding injections. I would’ve also loved ot fully flesh out the other pages I had planned, including a person’s page, a friend’s page, and fleshing out what a favourites page should feel like to navigate.

Checkpoint

ROLE

TIMELINE

TOOLS