Overview
Gap/Opportunity
Players on different levels were always in need for more power. Power that's not limited to a ship or an officer, it should go fleet wide.
Solution
A new category of characters comprising the most impactful heroes / villains in Star Trek bringing power to officers and fleet via deep individual investment as they set the strategy from the player's base.
Impact 01
Introduced and conducted Design Sprint workshop with the team, got the team on the same page and aligned UX in the right direction.
Impact 02
Created First Time User Experience to introduce the feature to engage player. It helped increase engagement and our revenue went up by +7.5%.
Impact 03
Reduced UX production and development time by 15%.
Impact 04
Helped generate a lot of excitement and curiosity ever since release.
Goals
Lvl 40+
Players
Give a new avenue for power that incentivises upgrading the rest of the content.
Lvl 25-39
Players
Diversify the grind needed in mid level via event management to achieve extra ship power.
Lvl 15-24
Players
Integrate with Star Trek lore via most known characters in an IP from early in the game.
Lvl 15>
Players
Players are still learning
the game, the feature is locked.
Core progression
Unlock Loop
How a player unlocks a
new commander.
Gameplay Loop
How a player plays
the feature.
Process: Design Sprint
Tackling complex challenges and testing solutions.
Day 1
Align Everyone
We start by exploring the problem and establishing a shared understanding among your team. You then map out the challenge.
Day 2
Sketch
Pick inspiring products/ services and highlight what makes them best and how they solve for our pain points from previous task.
Day 3
Decide
At this point UX takes over, decides which of the above sketches and ideas are best and makes a quick prototype.
Day 4
Build
All the teams are aligned on the goals and
how the feature will shape up.
Important screens are ready.
Day 5
Test and Refine
All the teams are aligned basic goals and
how the feature will shape up.
A basic wireframe based prototype is ready.
Learnings from the UX playtest
I got confused when looking at the Commander profile page.
Participant 1
I wasnt sure what the difference was between Abilities...
Participant 2
It was not very easy to understand in the first go.
Participant 3
Learnings detailed
Whilst we were on the right track, our designs needed a lot of improvements to help players understand each screen better so that they can spend time learning about Commanders abilities and strategising their play.
Changes to design
I gathered the feedbacks from the play-test and made changes to the mockups, worked with UI and ART team to create the final screens.
Challenges
Techical constraints
During the Design sprint, I noticed that the Tech team needed considerable resources to develop. To avoid adding to their workload, I aligned them with UX goals and included them from the start. This ensured that neither team had to compromise.
The use of pre-existing component libraries restricted the design's flexibility. Unfortunately, this was a completely new feature, I tried to reuse as much as possible but had to design and add new components to the library.
Budget constraints
The team planned to take an MVP approach without player testing, but I realised it wasn't viable and encouraged them to test our early prototypes, which is critical for the success of a large-scale feature. It was not easy to convice as it require sometime to schedule, find participants and conduct testing.
I did remove a lot of elements to make it easier to develop and added it to the future improvement list.
Stakeholder management
At first, I received a lot of feedback, which resulted in numerous changes. I was able to persuade the stakeholders to hold on to their feedback because many items will be evaluated after player testing, which worked.
Furthermore, from our Design Sprint exercise, I had a few of stakeholders aligned with my direction; it all came down to ensuring that the OKRs were met by the intended design, the goals helped make the design more apparent and required fewer adjustments.
Launch
Outcomes and results
Better time Allocation
I learnt from my previous project that I was always going back and forth with stakeholders, which resulted in more time spent on Figma and little time left for player testing.
For Fleet commanders, I used the design sprint process and focused my efforts on secondary research, studying our competitors. I interacted closely and early with them to achieve their buy-in. As a result, more time is spent on player testing and implementing modifications based on player feedback.
I was able to deliver the designs with feedback and playtest before the deadline, saving money.
Increase in engagement
My UX solution onboarded and assisted players in quickly learning the feature, increasing engagement and resulting in a 7.5% boost in income.
Player data on "It was easy to source and get started with a fleet commander" can be found on the right.
Customer Satisfaction
On the left is a clip from our Customer Satisfaction Survey; in summary, most of our customers were more than "satisfied," which is a good indicator, but there is still room for improvement, such as fewer glitches, better usability testing, and so on.
Introduction to
'Fleet Commanders'
In 2023, I worked on a Large scale feature at Scopely's Digit Game. The brief was to introduce a new method for players to gain more power that spans across their fleet.
Role
Worked as the Lead UX Designer for the project. Collaborated with a big team and a UX researcher.
Deliverables
-
Workshop facilitation
-
Iterative design
-
User- experience design
-
User-interface design
-
Wireframing
-
Remote user testing
Team
1 Product Manger
2 Game Designers
5 Tech(BE+FE)
1 UI-Tech
1 Producer
2 QA
1 Lead UX