Gammunity
Role: UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer
Team: Individual
Tools: Sketch, Figma
Timeline: March 2022 - May 2022
Keywords: UX Research, UX/UI Design, Product Design
Overview
Gammunity is a digital distribution, video games news aggregation, and discussion platform. Users are encouraged to submit, repost, and subscribe contents based on their preference. Common post-related features such as like, favorite, and comment are also implemented in the design. Posts are mainly organized and distributed by themes and communities. Types of media supported on Gammunity include but not limited to videos, texts, pictures and arts illustrations, and video-audio streams. Gammunity also provides global game rankings and recommendations based on user-centered reviews and discussions.
Execution
Project Initiation Context 📃
Have you ever played Minecraft, Call Of Duty, League of Legend, Overwatch, Animal Crossing, FIFA or … ?
Have you tried to use search engines to search for gameplay tutorial and news updates about the game you are playing?
Are you able to find most of the things you need in one search?
As a video game player with work experiences in video game industry, I experienced the problem of information discrepancy whenever I was trying to enter a video game for the first time.
The lack of available information cost me dozens of hours of trial and error to keep up with other players in the game. This issue seems to be pretty prevalent among my colleagues and friends, and many people have expressed similar concerns online.
User Research & Problem Space 🔍
User Research
I interviewed 5 video game players with different level of game experience and personal genre preference in game choices to ensure a relatively diverse and representative result.
1. Users have strong incentive to receive and share information about game tutorial. Being able to excel and rank top in the game is critical to user’s game experience.
2. Informative and digital distribution platforms like HUPU and Discord are helpful for users to share their experience.
3. One of the key issues with current platforms designed for gamers is that information has not been successfully aggregated. They have to use different apps to communicate with different people.
4. Video is more straightforward than graphic and textual tutorials. Users also like to watch live stream of world championship and tournament.
Product Research
Products are categorized into 4 groups:
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User-Driven Discussion Platforms
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Private Message Communications
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Professional Applications
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Casual Social Medias
Over 10 online social media platforms are analyzed. These platforms are commonly used by video/mobile game players to search and share information related to gameplay and game news. I found that different product prioritizes different features and targets different user groups and needs. Hardly any of them is able to cater all the needs summarized from the user interviews.
Most of these tools are built on the basis of voluntary information sharing and self-motivated information consumption. There are potentials in building public knowledge through online social interaction that is inclusive to all types of games.
Ideation & Solution 🧠
Users satisfaction mainly come from their success in the game and mastery of gameplay. Current video game players, especially gamers of multiplayer online battle/strategy games that demand collaboration and strategy planning, need an information and social platform for them to contribute and exchange valuable information related to the gameplay and ranking.
How might we extend their game experience outside of the game console and enjoy additional social elements in a global gamer community?
Gammunity
An online digital information distribution & educational platform designed for video game players
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Prototype Designs ✍️
Information Hierarchy
The solution is divided into 5 major components with actions and tasks associated with user needs.
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Feed activity/Home page: presents posts according to user's preference and followed account
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Discussion Post: read, respond, write posts, and share to the community
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Live Stream: focuses on live channels and video contents
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Game Library: provides advanced search feature about specific game for users to reference
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Profile: account administration and content management
Ultimately, the users will be able to achieve their goals related to information consumption and contribution effortlessly in any format.
Low Fidelity Prototype & Wireframes
Based on the design decisions, I created a low-fi prototype wireframes to help consolidate the designs of key screens.
Home (Feed) Page
Post Detail
Send Post
Live Stream
Game Library
Personal Profile
Design System
01. Typography
02. Colors
03. Components
User Needs
Need #1:
Effortless sharing and posting process
Need #2:
User-centered and inclusive design of multimedia features
Need #3:
Contextual design for video game specific content and theme
Need #4:
High-accessibility and game-specific community
Final Design 👾
01. Landing and Welcome
Dark Mode
Light Mode
First Time Signed In
02. Home and Feeds
Home page includes feeds from every community the users follow and can be sorted by popularity and latest. Users are also able to search or selectively view information from a specific community by interacting with the search/filter bar at the top.
03. Feed/Post Details
This is what the users will see when they enter into a single post. Like, collect, and share features are fully installed. All the comments to the post is listed at the bottom of the post and the comments are interactive as well. This is also one of the entry points to other user's profile and community.
04. Live Stream
All live streams channels can be found on this page with subscribed channels listed first and the rest listed by popularity. Filtering options of game genres are convenient to use.
05. Game Library
Game library aggregates games from the global market and documents relevant information for the users to consult. 'Game of the week' section aims to provide an overview of an individual game that is popular in recent weeks.
06. Game Details and Review
Detailed view of an item in the library provides essential information about the game and its developer. There is an entry point to the community of this game. User review function is designed at the bottom with common diagram patterns illustrating the statistic results.
07. Community
After entering the community, users will have access to all the posts within the community and interacting with other members from the community. Community is founded by either official producers of the game or users themselves. The users will need to join a community first before they are able to make comments.
08. Send Post
The entry point to the post editor is through the plus sign at the bottom right corner of the screen. The post can be written entirely in text, image, video, or a combination of all three media with proper title. Users can choose the visibility of the post to be private, within community, or public.
09. Personal Profile
Personal profile is the main entry point to the community, channel subscriptions, collection of contents, and post drafts.
10. Video Demo