overview

As a part of the University of Michigan School of Information Design Clinic, I led a team of junior UX professionals in providing UX research and design services to a local indie game studio: Ghost Roadhouse. Over the course of 12 weeks, we took their new mobile title, The Origin: Latitude 90,  from early alpha to a production ready, native mobile experience. The game is currently in production and is expected to be released Summer of 2016.

The Origin: Latitude 90 is a mobile-based social deduction game set in an Antarctic sci-fi world. Without getting too deep into the specific game mechanics, there are a few things you should know about the game:

• Requires at least 8 players
• 2 Teams (Researchers & Infected)
• Only Infected players know who is on their team
• Instead of 'dying', 'Researchers' become 'Infected'

Due to the local and collaborative nature of this client, I was able to lead the team in practicing an Agile workflow with 2-week sprints. I've attached a high-level outline of what we achieved below. More detailed descriptions of our methods and processes are included afterwards.

SPRINT 1 (WEEK 1 - 2)

Method: Competitive Analysis

Both to familiarize the team with the genre and to understand the competitive landscape, the entire team played existing social deception games such as Mafia, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, and The Resistance: Avalon. After each game, team members provided feedback, listing one thing they enjoyed and one thing they wanted improved.

Finding 1: 'Dying' in game makes for poor user experience

Death is a core mechanic in most games, but it is particularly punishing in social deduction games. Often times, why a player dies is largely a product of circumstance; something the player him or herself has almost no say in. 

What’s even worse is that in traditional turn-based social deduction games like Mafia and Werewolf, dying means that players are unable to participate for the rest of the game. They don't get to play, they just get to watch.

Finding 2: Less vocal players felt silenced and left out

Social deduction games are dependent on the game's ‘social’ aspect. Players have to converse and coordinate their actions to win. Unfortunately, often it is one or two players that dominate the conversation and drown out others.

Players ended up feeling silenced. This is particularly prevalent in traditional Mafia and Werewolf, where players are assigned ‘hidden roles’ that give them access to information the rest of the players do not have.

Sprint 1 (getting our feet wet)

Takeaway 1: Lack of agency

Through competitive analysis, the team was able to personally experience the social deduction game space. We were able to develop a baseline understanding for the players we would be designing for. We experienced the most prominent struggle in social deduction games: the frustration of not having enough control.

Conversely, experiencing the flaws in other social deduction games really validated the unique features of The Origin: Latitude 90. We'll go through some of them here:

Takeaway 2: Validation of features

1. A death-free game is inclusive

Unlike traditional social deception games like Mafia and Werewolf, The Origin is a death-free experience. In place of death, Researchers join the Infected team and continue to actively participate in the game. This has an incredibly positive impact on user experience because it not only prevents users from being excluded, by including all users at all times, it makes the game experience itself more festive.

2. Giving everyone a piece of information increases agency

Throughout the game, every player in the game receives the ability to send and receive 'packages'. These 'packages' contain clues about the state of the game (e.g Player X and Y are on the same team). However, players cannot open these 'packages' themselves. Instead, these clues are read aloud by the receiving party. At the same time, if a Researcher player opens a 'package' from one of the Infected, they run the risk of becoming Infected themselves. 

This game mechanic in particular really gives everybody in the group a voice. Even though there are still special 'hidden roles' in The Origin, by providing everybody with a piece of the information - all players are able to participate in a way that wasn't present in other social deduction games. 

SPRINT 2-4 (WEEK 3-8)

Method: Playtesting

For 5 out of the 6 weeks, conducted live playtests. 4 of 5 sessions were with the same two playtest groups. It was this iterative user feedback that powered our Agile process. We collected 100+ responses and 10+ hours of footage. Playtesting was ideal as it let us both observe users naturally and receive direct feedback afterwards. During each game, the team recorded notable interactions in-game (positive and negative). After each game, we conducted moderated sessions where each participant provided feedback. 

Finding 1: Social interactions are the heart and soul of the game

Players were completely immersed in the social interactions they had with one another. It defined the game. Some were often so engrossed that they'd forget to look back at their phones.

Players enjoy the process of discussion, deduction, deception, discovery, and betrayal. These interactions had such a lasting impact that they often carried over multiple rounds of the game. 

Finding 2: The game format and UI can be confusing

While players absolutely enjoyed the social interactions, holding multiple conversation at the same time proved too much at times. This was especially the case for first-time players that were unfamiliar with both the game's mechanics and terminology. Lack of discoverability in early versions of the game's UI negatively affected navigation, and in some cases, misled users to accidentally give up critical, game-breaking information.

Sprint 2-4 (finding the core)

Takeaway 1: Facilitate and augment social interaction

After discovering how important social interactions were during playtesting, we made the conscious design decision to further facilitate and augment that social experience moving forward. It clarified the user interface's role as a facilitator and moderator that helped progress the game instead of the primary source of content and entertainment. In the words of one of our playtesters:

Takeaway 2: Improve discoverability and navigation for the UI

Users were often were unable to discover the location of features they wanted to access independently. Whether it was to cast a vote or mark a suspicion, or corrupt a Researcher - users didn't have strong visual cues to guide them towards the actions they wanted to take. 

Most mobile games are designed to draw you in and keep your attention at all times. After learning how important the social interactions were, we wanted to do the opposite of that. Instead, we wanted our UI and interactions to encourage users to look away from the screen 80-90% of the time. More importantly, we wanted to make it so that they when they looked back, they had intuitive visual cues for what events had occurred and what actions they could take. This was especially important in the context of The Origin because a moment of confusion often cascaded into you missing out on an important discussion or piece of information. 

Design Change 1: Sticky Header

Design Change 2: Progress Bar + Timer

Design Change 3: Clue Card

SPRINT 5 (WEEK 9-10)

Method: Heuristic Evaluation

Before we went into the final design phase of the project, we conducted 7 independent heuristic evaluations on the user interface of The Origin: Latitude 90. The purpose of this research was to catch any issues we may have potentially missed in playtesting and identify how we would be able to address them as we made our transition from web to mobile.

Finding 1: Lack of System Feedback

A consistent theme across the team's evaluations was the lack of system feedback in the UI. Visibility of system status was something we had worked on throughout playtesting, but there were still features we could improve. The interface would often provide the ability to complete an action, but did not offer confirmation of its completion. This made for poor user experience,  particularly in end-game states where in certain cases, the outcome of the game was decided without explicitly informing every user.

Finding 2: Lack of Error Prevention

As briefly mentioned in playtest findings, users were prone to committing unintentional errors. The biggest contributor to this problem was the similarity in the game's notifications. Both private notifications intended for a single player to keep to themselves was formatted in the same way as public notifications from 'packages' meant to be read aloud.

SPRINT 5 (double-checking)

Takeaway: Validation of Playtesting Findings

Ultimately, this process of Heuristic Evaluation really reinforced our findings from the previous sprints through playtesting. This framework was useful for the team in categorizing all the different sorts of feedback we received from our users into distinct areas we could improve upon. Furthermore, because these heuristic evaluations were all conducted independently, the team also enjoyed the opportunity to both validate their common interpretations in addition to being exposed to fresh perspectives they had not considered themselves.

SPRINT 6 (WEEK 11-12)

Design Deliverable 1: UI Redesign

As we made the transition from a web app to native-mobile app, we were given a new set of constraints to define the experience in. We had to recycle elements of web that were well received and adapt them to take advantage of mobile's unique features. Here's some of the changes we made below:

To improve discoverability:

• Transitioned the navigation from scroll format to a tab format
• Introduced sticky header that includes game-critical information
• Introduced drawer menus into the 'rule and role card' to improve accessibility and improve readability

To improve navigation and system feedback:

• Transitioned to a grid-based view from a list-based view for the 'game lobby' and 'suspicions card' to improve accessibility
• Introduced a section header dedicated to system status feedback so users know when an action has been completed

Design Deliverable 2: Brand Design

In addition to redesigning the entire user-interface for The Origin: Latitude 90, we also were tasked with developing a new set of icons for the native mobile experience. Previously, they had used stock icons from the Internet - most of which did not fit together. Both in an effort to improve usability and the flavor of the game, I designed a completely new set of icons for the game. Here are some examples:

• Redesigned 'suspect' icons for the 'suspicion grid',  utilizing colors and details to provide visual identity while maintaining the same silhouette to demonstrate similar function.

• Redesigned 'role' icons to reflect greater granularity within the Infected team. Previously they had all been represented by the same 'hazard' icon on the left. In order to represent the evolution within 'Infected' roles, the new icons build off one another to indicate progression.

sprint 6 (FINAL deliverables)

Deliverables:

• Complete set of high-fidelity mockups
• Complete set of icons, optimized for both iOS and Android device sizes
• Research documentation including playtesting footage

I've attached a few interaction maps and some of the icons below:

Interaction Map 1- launch & role assignment

Interaction Map 2 - suspicion tracking & experiments/packages

ICONS

MOCKUPS

The Origin: Latitude 90 is currently in development and is expected to be released Summer 2016.