5 Ways to Introduce User Experience in Game Design

One of my goals this last year is to introduce more user experience design processes to the team. So, this past year I’ve been applying variations of the design thinking processes to a free to play gaming team. The intention is to include all team members into the design thinking process. Learning how to connect solutions to problems.

After year and a half, three features later here are some techniques that have worked for us:

1.Plant the Seed for Collaboration - Condensed Two Hour Design Thinking Workshop

Introduced a short version of a design thinking workshop with the intention of creating structured collaboration. Link to original Google Design Sprint.

• Session 1 - What is the problem we’re trying to solve?

  • 60 minutes

  • 5-6 participants from different disciplines

  • Problem Prompt/Task

  • Lightning Talks (15 mins)

    • Research team - 3 mins talk about the problem space

    • Game Design team - 3 mins talk about the problem space

    • UX team - 3 mins talk about the problem space

  • How Might We? (30 mins)

    • Get all team members to list out “how might we?” problems - 5 mins

    • Vote up on problems together - 5 mins

    • Open discussion - 20 mins

• Session 2 - Sketch and vote

  • 60 minutes

  • Same participants as first session

  • Crazy 8’s (8 mins)

    • Give each participant a “how might we” to sketch solutions for

  • Share (10 mins)

    • Give each participant two minutes to share their ideas

  • Upvote (5 mins)

    • Each participant votes on three ideas they feel solves the problem best

  Engineering and design connected on design constraints and surfaced new ideas.

2. broaden problem space: Lightning Talks

Invited representatives from different disciplinary team to come forward to share 3-5 minutes of insights on the problem space. This gives all participants in the workshop a broader way to understand the problem. More space and time to focus on discussion common problems and more time to come up with solutions.

3. structure design feedback: curiosity before feedback

Something that has been working well during feedback sessions is giving space to ask questions. Often when we are in review sessions someone will show a design and then ask for feedback. We need to give space to ask clarifying questions before giving feedback so that the feedback that we give empowers the designer to reflect on their work and in turn evaluate the feedback.

4. Design patterns

Creating a cloud document that has all the design patterns helped us ship and create quick features. A designer on our team, Hernaldo created one for us. This was a bit more challenging to maintain given the speed of the project, but having one space for all the design assets made all other UX designer’s work faster.

5. VISUAL Sitemap

Something that I tried to do this year is to identify all the routes going in and out of different areas of the game. We were able to use it to gauge any dead-ends, game loops and evaluate funnels.

Today, the team now is much more focused on creating smaller prototypes using the existing design patterns. We’re learning more about our design solutions and continue to work with research to test our hypothesis. About 20 - 30 participants have engaged in a workshop from IC level to Director level. It created a space for open discussion on problems and to build stronger relationships.