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Gaming Experience Design
UX/IA Research, Design and Illustration
Milestone AV Technologies (now Legrand AV) wanted to enter the video gaming market and sell AV products to gamers on Amazon under the name EchoGear. I researched, designed and illustrated the content for the UX/IA within the consumer product instructions. Additionally, with a twist, created the manual to look like a UI.
Processes
User Evaluation | Content Evaluation | User Research | Personas | Contextual Inquiry | Low Fidelity Prototyping |
Sketches | Wireframing | Visual Design | Technical Content Writing | Illustration | User Testing
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Methodologies
Waterfall | Scrum | Lean UX | UX Design Thinking | A/B Testing | Beta Testing | Online Surveys |
Usability Testing | User Journey/Journey Mapping | Task Analysis |
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Technology
Illustrator | Photoshop | InDesign | Solidworks | Figma
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Problem
Design an app customers can use to guide them through assembly and help them to set up products in the gaming industry
Project kick-off Research & Discovery​
Brainstorming and Define solution
Design, Demo and Ideation
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Testing
Usability Testing, Stakeholder Reviews, Content analysis​​
Implement Feedback and Final demo​​​​
Document and Present to Development​​
Kick-Goals
Focus group: Determine focus group.
Motivation: To create a connection between gamers and the EchoGear product in a fun and quirky way.
Solution: Make online presence, content and packaging more engaging, interactive and visually stimulating for EchoGear to connect with the gamers.
Technical Ability: Most users/gamers are very handy and highly technical, but sometimes it’s important to supply content for them to make a task quickly.
Research and Discovery
Why do extensive research on a market that another company has already done all the research for?
I recruited a gaming industry marketing and campaign manager from TWITCH (https://www.twitch.tv/). She caught us up on all things gamer.
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Key Takeaways
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The information was very helpful for the personas, and I received a ton of documentation in regard to the subculture.
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Highly encouraged: "If you are going to go gamer, go all the way! Don't fake it!"
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The money within the gaming market was with 30-40 year old's who have been gaming since the beginning.
Additional Research
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I recruited gamers age who were 30-40 years old.
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Watched them game and gathered information about touch points in the table below.
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Researched most influential video games.
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Watched a few documentaries on gaming and it's history.
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Researched content for gamer lingo and acronyms. Since this was going to be instructional content was very important to research.
Solution
Pitch to Stakeholders
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Have the product setup be a game in itself -
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Put together the mount without dying.
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Earn your badge by putting the product together.
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Incorporate Achievements/Merits
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Bring in a life meter/health meter
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Gamer Toolbox/Artillery
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Gear
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Pick-ups
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Items
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Loot
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Grab your Tools
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Avoid personal injury (4 point damage)
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Visually design it to look like a mobile game or handheld game UI​
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Planning
Plan for Project
Phase 1
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Work with the Product Engineers to map out the product assembly and installation.
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Create a flowchart using Figma and test the workflow on internal stakeholders and colleges.
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Group the steps to be broken down into levels, stages and achievements.
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Sketch out some ideas for layout the look like UI and gathered visual assets for inspiration.
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Beta-test the concept as a paper copy within the box that consumers open when the product is shipped to them from Amazon.
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Consumer feedback.
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Stage 2
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Design a prototype responsive UI for app
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Usability test app
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Develop an app
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Stage 3
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Add a QR code to the box, so users can get to the app easily to assemble and set up the product.
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Gather user feedback on the full experience
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​Launch
Have an ad on TWITCH and other platforms to draw attention to products and let gamers write reviews.
Brainstorming and Visual Inspiration
Using data from research, assembling the products many times, and working closely with the product engineers, I sketched some ideas. Then I created a mood board for the project and started designing.
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Moodboard
Simplified layout
Simplified Icon Design
Prototype Round 1
User Testing Round 1
Live Participants Session
Gathered a group of participants to follow these steps as I observed each one.
Usability Test Results
Feedback From Participants
There were mostly suggestions for changes in the contents text:
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READ the entire manual prior to use (change “use” to “Quest”) (No teleporting!) To ensure you're prepared for this easy install process, please read through these instructions completely too before you embark on your quest.
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“Yeah, the boring stuff ... but read it, so you don’t jack things up!” (change to “don’t get pwnd!”)
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Toy Surprise” change to “Bonus Gear!” (or whatever they call tools in gaming world)
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Grab your Tools from the Arsenal or Go Pixel Hunting in your Arsenal
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Change “Step” to Level or Stage or something?
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Do not allow children to feed on parts (small objects)
Customer Reviews of Beta Test on Amazon
Continued Consumer/Gamer Reviews with UX Content mentions
QR Code Test
After the product manuals had such good success, we could move to Phase 2.
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At the time, QR codes had been out a while and sort of taken a dive in usability. (This was before cell phones had the QR code reader built in.) ​
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The business decided to change the plan a little and add the QR code to the box as well as a link to the PDF of the manual online with the product on Amazon and on EchoGears website.
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We applied analytics to see how much people used the three different options without any paper instructions.
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Development and prototyping of the mobile app was paused until we could get enough user data to support the need for a mobile app.
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Phase 2 User Testing Results
The QR code was a really huge success!
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Users loved they could zoom in with their mobile or tablet device to PDF images. ​
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They liked that they didn't have to keep a manual lying around.
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People could print the manual if they wanted to on their own.
The business stakeholders LOVED they could SAVE A TON OF MONEY on printing costs!
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