Nina Brock

Sean Kim

Frank Pena

Introduction

Communication is messy. It can be done in various ways and forms that basic communication can sometimes require much more work than a person can expect. In today’s society, online communication software (c-software) is the go-to way to talk to another person, sometimes even if that person is 5 feet away from you. With the plethora of different types of c-software, we decided to analyze and propose changes to one, Discord.

If you aren’t familiar with Discord, it is a c-software that is very popular for people (particularly males) ranging from 16–30 years old. Compared to other popular c-software, Discord is vastly different in its main features and uses. For one, Discord employs a server and channel system. A server is an overall section that is related to one topic, channels exists and only exists in specific servers. There are two types of channels, voice & text, that can be made in servers with each their own specific sub-genre or use. This separation of ideas and conversations is revolutionary in the social c-software scene. A very similar idea is employed by Slack but this was intended to be used for team communication.

With the features that Discord brings to social c-software, it introduces a whole new way of communication to the populace. As mentioned before, our rough idea of a target population is young males, who most likely use it for voice chat in games and are familiar with computers and current technological standards. However, in consequence of its usefulness, according to our study, the population for Discord is steadily growing beyond its demographic. We found that 60% of our respondents use Discord, but only 55% of them are gamers as a hobby. Thus, some users use Discord for non-gaming related communication.

Due to this expansion of users, the Discord system will soon require some visual and functional modifications to better accommodate its growing diverse user base, as the current system leaves much to be discovered. As seen below, we employed multiple methods to discover what a broad range of users struggle with and expect of the Discord user interface.

Methods

Method of Gathering: Google Survey

We conducted about 20 surveys with varying user populations. The overall goal was to gain a general understanding of what kind and what reason do most people use c-software.

We started our survey with biographical information about the person, eventually leading to what kind of c-software they most commonly use and in what context. We also received specific information about our software, Discord. We did this to get specific information about how, and why it’s used, and by whom.

According to our survey, most people use c-software because of the convenience and efficiency. It’s simple to open up an application, type in the intended person’s name, and type “Hi” rather than driving to the said person’s house and repeating the same phrase. However, all people in our survey also preferred that the c-software they use is free. This is interesting because the standard for communication is that it’s free and easy, and therefore, most people aren’t willing to pay for a form of it, regardless of the ‘extra’ perks that come with. Specific to Discord, we found that a majority of the users that took our survey (or were actively familiar with it) do not use it for gaming or game much themselves. This provided proof to us, signifying the expansion of Discord’s user base.

Method of Investigating: User Interviews

We conducted about 6 interviews with varying user populations. Our interviewees ranged from students, young adults, to parents, with interviews lasting around an hour each.

We started our interviews trying to get to know the interviewees. This is why we started with biographical questions. From there, we shifted the conversation to how and what communication software does the interviewee use, how and why. We did this with narrowing questions to get the center of the interviewee’s use of c-software.

Overall, all seem to enjoy using c-software, albeit for different reasons. They all agreed that c-software provided them with the freedom to say what they want to say in a way they can control. While some had their grievances with the application like how people are allowed to interact with their profiles but still ensuring people’s privacy. Each interviewee may have had various reasons for using c-software but in the end, everyone of them enjoys using it and finds it a useful and important part of their daily lives.

Method of Evaluating: User Tests

We gathered our 6 participants to help perform certain tasks in our user tests. The user tests were between 20–30 minutes long, however tests were variable depending on the user’s previous experience with Discord. We had users perform basic tasks to see how the First Time User Experience of Discord is for the general user. We would also guide the participant if they struggled in performing a task, prompting some questions about what they were going through when struggling or completing a task.

Despite the differences in backgrounds we found that our participants had similar struggles when using Discord. From this knowledge, we were able to narrow down on specific aspects of Discord that require remodeling.

Competitive Analysis

To help us in our redesign, we did a competitive analysis of other c-software applications. We wanted to learn what others in the market have done that we could learn from for Discord. We looked at two direct and two indirect competitors in the market.

For direct competitors, our first one was TeamSpeak. A Voice over Internet Protocol application used primarily by gamers. It focuses purely on voice and text chatting, and has more features on the technical side such as encryption of data and better voice quality. It however does not have the easiest server creation, as making new servers requires the user to go into their command line interface. Teamspeak’s user base is primarily for gamers familiar with technology, which Discord’s initial user base was as well. But we are hoping, with our redesign, to become more accessible to a more general population.

Our second direct competitor was Zoom Video Conference, a remote video conferencing application. It has many features, such as screen share, voice calling, breakout rooms, and text chat. Zoom is also fairly easy to learn with its labeled buttons on its user interface, which makes sense as it is used a lot by educators and other workers in various industries. If we want to redesign Discord for a more general audience, then we would look to Zoom. With a user interface that doesn’t have too many things showing the user at once, and having labeled icons to tell the user what the button does on screen. These are a few things that we will be thinking about in our redesigns.

Finally, we have both of our indirect competitors Facebook Messenger and KakaoTalk. Both of these applications are instant messaging applications that allow users to message one person or multiple people at once. They both have similar functionality and model standard text chatting conventions such as showing the most recent messaged user and including a send button in the application for sending messages. We would look to these two in modeling Discord’s UX more closely to what standard text chatting would afford.

Users and Personas

As mentioned before, the user base we acknowledge for Discord was primary gamer males age from 16–30. However, as seen from the results of our survey, this group is beginning to expand to different genders and ages. To edit our previous statement, we now update the user based to young adults ranging from 16–35 year olds. The “gamer” tag is slowly distancing itself from Discord as users are using it more as a go-to social c-software. To accomplish this new introduction of users, we decided to model 3 personas to reflect a new wider range of users.

Julia is an active Discord user and uses it to talk to her friends while they all game together. She likes gaming, new technology, and black coffee. She has a diverse friend group with some being “gamers” and others not. She finds it annoying when she makes plans on Discord with some friends and she has to manually text all the other “non-gamer” friends about it individually. She wants all of her friends to be on a Discord server together but her “non-gamers” don’t even understand what a server is.

Felicia is a creative writing major at NYU and only uses her laptop to write papers, check social media, or stream the latest episode of the Bachelor. She has a group of childhood friends back in her hometown that she likes to keep in contact with but finds it difficult as they each use different social media. She hates being the planner for friend visits as there is no nice group chat for everyone. She recently learned about Discord from a friend and likes it but has no idea how to use it. She is confused by the names used, and overall idea. She wishes for more direction and more common features in comparison to other social communication software.

Ryan is a recent business school graduate and he is hoping to stay connected with his college friends. He just made a Discord account to communicate with members of his Senior project. He struggled to grasp it in the beginning but he began to enjoy it and soon, joined and created servers for his friends who were on Discord. He is still a novice, not understanding how to do specific tasks like making roles or what an “Audit Log” is but he wants to learn. He has been attempting to learn some server management features but is struggling to complete some, so Google has been his best friend to learn.

UX Evaluations

We performed user tests in an effort to find any pain points that users had while using Discord. Some glaring problems that we noticed were certain menus intimidating users with a large array of options and users having trouble navigating through the layout of Discord.

When asked to create roles, many users had a hard time proceeding as the settings had way too many options at first glance. Many of our users needed guidance from moderators to get through that section which is troublesome as a feature. Also, we noticed that the initial layout of Discord confused some users as there were many icons, but a lack of showing what exactly they did. This was another part of the user test that required some guidance from moderators and something we looked to redesign.

In addition, we found some other issues that users had while using Discord. When tasked to send a message, some users moved their mouse over in an attempt to click a send button that does not exist in the Discord layout. With Discord’s other buttons, it brought added confusion during the test. This was a common find with users who are used to text messaging applications and their basic affordance to click a button rather than the “enter” key on a keyboard. And finally, we noticed some users trying to create roles through a user’s profile. The user’s profile has a “+” button for roles, and thus were confused when it couldn’t create roles there but rather only assign existing roles. However, their thinking makes sense and is something we should look into redesigning for Discord.

With these four targets in mind, we all set off to create our mockups of what we think Discord could do to address these problems.

Redesign Mockups

Here is a redesign mockup of the settings menu for role creation. We decided to split Discord’s settings into two parts, one for General Permissions and one for Advanced Permissions. General permissions would show the most common options for role permissions and show those first in an accordion menu. And if the user wants to use some other options, they can click on Advanced Permissions and see the other options that Discord has before the redesign. This would also help alleviate the issues of introducing a large amount of information at once, but cutting down on the amount of information at first glance.

To help with Discord’s navigation, we changed some icons and added more descriptions to some of the icons as well. Since there were multiple “+” icons on screen, we added an upload icon to the message bar on the bottom of the screen to separate it from the add server button on screen. We also added some text to the add server button to explain what the button does for a user who may be using Discord for the first time. With these changes, we would be improving the First Time User Experience of Discord and help first time users navigate smoother.

With this change, we added a send button onto Discord’s interface and hid the other buttons that are initially on screen onto a more button. Having the send button on screen would help with certain user’s affordances of clicking a button to send, as not all users know to press the “enter” key in order to send messages. We hid the other 3 Discord buttons since they are not used as frequently, but are still accessible if needed.

Here, we redesigned the add roles in user profiles within a Discord Server. Here we allow the user to look for a role to assign and if that role does not exist, we allow them to create it. We have them quickly create the role with its name and color with basic server permissions. This is a way to quickly create roles and if a user wants to change a role’s permissions, then they can do so in the server settings later on.

Reflection

It would be the height of hubris to say that we “fixed” all the present problems in Discord. However, we feel that with the changes mentioned, Discord would become a more usable and accessible software.

The addition of the ‘send’ button to the messaging feature was something we discovered during our user tests. A user who was used to Facebook Messenger was looking for a button to send their message, not aware that Discord requires the enter key to be pressed to send (on Desktop). The same group of users was also unfamiliar with what was where, which is why we added clearer labels and more common icons, i.e. the new upload button. The setting abstraction was a must as almost all users during the user test commented on the length of the page and the complexity of creating a general role. This also led into us altering the role adding/assigning process. Even the users who were familiar with Discord struggled with the creation of a role because of a feature that was similar, assign role. That is why we adjusted the location and functionality, placing it in a spot that the users defaulted to look.

As mentioned, these changes are not a comprehensive review of all of Discord’s kinks, but a response and remedy to what our users struggled with. As designers, our main priority was to the user and their respective wants and needs. We hope we were able to create a new and more user friendly Discord user interface, and look forward to new additions that will further make the software open to a broadening population.