Competitive Analysis

For main functionality of Game Wizard—helping users pick a game—there are currently no solutions available. The competition in this related area are for game libraries and game stats. Since Game Wizard does have library storage functionality, the competitors for this feature were analyzed. View full competitive analysis.

Through this analysis it was discovered that an opportunity presented was that none of these competitors addressed the problem Game Wizard is solving. Also, there was an opportunity for doing so with a simple, intuitive, and organized interface.

User Surveys

Users were initially surveyed to gain insight into how the current user base felt about the problem Game Wizard was addressing, how the users liked to organize their game libraries, if at all, and what where their current pain points with the current options available. A follow up survey was conducted to explore what value users placed on a solution that met their needs. See full user survey analysis.

Features/Tools

Through this survey, presented to over sixty individuals, the following features were consistently marked as high importance for a tabletop game management and assistance app.

Pain Points

Users main pain points with existing services are that they aren’t visually pleasing, have a frustrating UI, are difficult to search, and are time consuming for any data entry.

User Personas

Based upon the user survey results, two key personas were developed to highlight the most common user needs. The goal with the personas was to understand and empathize with the user’s needs and experiences in relation to how they would interact with the service.

User Stories

With the business requirements, and the motivations, goals, and pain points identified in the user personas, user stories were created for these tasks. View user stories and tasks.

User Flows

The resulting user flows built out from the highest priority user tasks guided the essentials of what Game Wizard’s MVP should contain. View the full set of sketches and final flows.

Sitemap

Following the user flows, a sitemap and content strategy was designed to visualize how all these user flows would integrate with each together in a simple functional site. View the full size of final sitemap and content strategy.

Wireframes

Before jumping into the low-fidelity wireframes, sketched versions were conceptualized to determine which layouts would best meet the needs of the users while remaining simple and easy to navigate. A quick round of paper prototype testing was used to identify any user flow problems before moving on to wireframes. Surprisingly, testers did not indicate there were any flow problems with the paper prototype.

Tasks tested includeds, sign up, adding games to library, viewing library, viewing game details, searching for a game, searching for a friend, viewing user details, viewing friend list, running the game wizard, viewing and navigating the wizard results, and viewing and editing user settings.

Overall, the experience of the users was mostly favorable. Through the low-fi wireframe testing process several issues were discovered and adjusted accordingly in future revisions. The top action items were: two buttons on the Game Wizard (home) page were confusing and possibly not needed, it was unclear how the friend search results would look/function due to missing views, and it was unclear how a game would be removed from a user’s library.

Branding

The different options of branding, how it related to the application’s function and intent, were explored through sketching, preference testing, and moodboard research. Keeping the main functionality of the app and theme in mind, “Game Wizard” was chosen as it succinctly describes the purpose of the app while also allowing for some fun imagery to be developed with the name. The feeling developed for this concept was fun, playful, fantasy, and helpful for imagery in the logo mark.

Preference testing was used to refine the design. Taking note of testers reactions, I ended up simplifying the character design. This in turn carried over to the logo design as the hat tied into that design. Additionally, several rounds of preference testing were used to narrow down the logo branding marks. Below are the design iteration progressions and quotes from preference testers.

With the logo finalized, the brand identity was built to complement and reinforce the feelings and functionality evoked through the Game Wizard logo. A style guide was developed for the brand.

The top action items users identified as needing further attention: remove search on wizard page, redesign the progress bar, remove the redundant text “search to add friends”, adjust placement of “remove from library” link.

With this user feedback, these action items were addressed and applied to the final design.

The action item of the two buttons on the Game Wizard (home) page were confusing and possibly not needed was thoroughly explored through preference testing and usability testing. The design of this screen went through quite a few iterations until the simple final design was discovered.

As the product was converted to a high-fidelity prototype, preference testing was conducted to further refine the design for the most effective user experiences. Usability testing was performed to catch any issues and to gather more data on how user’s experienced the app. These top action items users identified as needed further attention: remove search on wizard page, redesign the progress bar, remove the redundant text “search to add friends”, and adjust placement of “remove from library” link.

Once all the top action items were addressed, the final design was applied to the high fidelity clickable prototype. Since this was a mobile first design, the mobile version was the final version created and tested with the option of a desktop version at a future stage of this project.

Additionally, a simple informational website was designed and built to provide additional information for users to explore and link to the various app stores.