COGS 187A, Week 5-Prototypes
Author: Kathy Vo
Team members: Jacob Browne, Wesley Chan, Chris Korkos, Pargat Singh
(Let it be known that a deadly virus took down Pargat on Wednesday and Chris on Thursday. All members were present on Tuesday.)
As we reach at the halfway point of the quarter, the central focus of the course switched to prototyping. As usual, the recurring concept was to never get too attached to one idea as it can limit innovation, if not increase the challenges involved for our raid-matching app. While we had dabbled in prototyping in the past, this week’s goal was to fully understand and replicate the different ways a new user would utilize the app.
Guiding Questions for the Wack Panther:
What are the many ways for to display a raid schedule that provides detailed information without overwhelming the user?
How does the design of the raid-matching interface affect the needs of the user?
What are the top priorities when users look for raids to join or potential teammates to recruit? How do we structure all this information?
Prototype Consolidation
One of the top priorities during the prototype consolidation process was the display of raids. How can users quickly find their desired matches without suffering through the heavy amount of game specific information? What do users want to see when they view another person’s profile?
This led to a debate on the necessity of a weekly view to find raids. The majority of interviewed users said they tended to arrange raids within hours of playing. However, Chris’ video game design professor reported a hectic lifestyle in academia, hence needed to actively schedule future raids that aren’t within the next few days. This aspect made our team realize that while our interviewed users varied in skills and gender, they were mostly limited to our student age group with a more flexible lifestyle. Therefore, we retained the weekly view. We had two main designs for the weekly view, which was to be conducted through the next day’s user testing.
Afterwards, we delved into how a user would create a raid to recruit fellow players. Since gamers tend to look for very specific aspects in other players, we struggled with how to fit all the information without overloading observing users. We decided to concentrate on a few basic aspects that all gamers wanted to see for an initial impression. Anything else would be reserved in an “Advanced Settings” button.
As the majority of our time was dedicated to raid-matching, we paid less attention to the messaging and profile components. Our goals for messaging was to simply get users connected and discuss about requesting/joining raid specifics, hence we decided to base off the messaging system from Facebook Messenger due to its simplicity. The initial prototype would soon be tested to see how it holds up for a real-life scenario.
User Testing
From both testing groups, the overall impression was…
“I don’t know what to do.”
Both testing groups struggled to navigate throughout the app, especially viewing and creating raids, without our assistance. Many of our icons were ambiguous, as one mistook our filter button for settings-related purposes. Universal icons were highly recommended in order to combat the specific nature of our raid-matching app.
Another concern expressed by both groups were privacy issues after a Facebook signup. Users may not want to reveal any information beyond their username or some gamers may be embarrassed to admit they regularly play League of Legends.
Future Direction
From both the user testing and prototyping session, we realized we need to carefully consider each aspect of the app. We need to make every button and movement as clear and concise as possible, eliminating any chance of ambiguity. While the raid schedule is still our highest priority, we need to examine every step for a smooth, quick navigation by any user. It’s back to the drawing board for restructuring the raid schedule view, but it’s not the end of the world.
