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LAuren Sachse

THE TIMELINE
January 17, 2024 - February 7, 2024


OUR TOOLS
Figma
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Trello

 

BOARD GAME PIECE SUPPLEMENT APP

THE PROBLEM
We found that board game players often lose pieces, score pads and cards.


THE GOAL
Create an app the provides board game players with  general and specialized tools for their board games.


MY ROLE
While I was involved in every step of the process, my primarily responsible was for UX research, UXD and UI. My collaborator mainly focused on copy and content design.

OUR PROCESS

RESEARCH

We interviewed six known board game players in order to gain insight into their habits and identify their pain points when playing.

Participants were limited to people who identified themselves as someone who regularly plays board games

Additionally, a 10-question survey was sent out via social media to gather more information about users board game habits.

We identified some trends between the people we interviewed.
 

  • Users tend to play a wide variety of games, wider than we even anticipated.
     

  • Users typically cite children as the reason that pieces go missing or go through wear and tear.
     

  • Users typically play board games 2-4 times per month.
     

  • Users often fall into one of two categories; “collectors” who like to keep their games in pristine condition as a hobby, and families who put their games through a lot of use.

RESEARCH RESULTS

The results of the social media survey show that a majority of board game players lose pieces, run out of score cards, and get into disputes about the rules of the game.

STORYBOARD

IDEATION

FEATURE PRIORITIZATION

Junk drawer items: timer, coin flip, notes sheet, dice & spinner
Search and add games
Personal game library

There were many of the  big-ticket items that had to be cut in favor of focusing on the core concepts that we were trying to achieve. Ultimately we landed on an MVP of having a select group of core features like dice and spinners, a games library for individual games, and a search function to find and add specific games to your library.

Our ideas were centered around the concept of an all-in-one app for everything the user might need to play board games.

The idea for the general use tools stemmed from the insight all of our users stating that they regularly play at least one or two games unique to them among the participants, so we knew we needed general-use tools for use with games that might not be available as a standalone title in the library.

Prototyping

We started our sketches with trying to optimize the primary user flow of the two major components of the app, the main library screen, the search function and the search results.

FIRST SKETCHES

Now that we had an idea of which screens we wanted to design, we began creating wireframes for each of the core tools.We decided to prototype games based on a current list of the top-selling board games of all time, excluding any that didn’t require any extra pieces, like checkers.

LOW FIDELITY

Testing

User testing consisted of participants running through several tasks in the general outline of what a typical first-time user would experience, and attempting to utilize all of the core features of the app.

Users were instructed to search for Monopoly, add it to their library, then open the game and use the features within the game. Users were then instructed to exit the game and open the “spinner” utility. No further context was provided, to ensure that users could identify the appropriate utility based on the icon alone.

 

Based on the user feedback we received, several changes were made to the overall design of the prototype.
 

  • Search results were made distinct from home screen

  • Some unnecessary screens were removed

  • Achieved parity between iOS and Android iterations

  • Some interactions were adjusted for smoother navigation


 

RESULTS

BRANDING

IOS MOCK-UPS

Group 13875.png

 

  • Our app has the potential to be useful for a broad range of users

  • The option for addition features is long and we need keep an eye on scope creep and take it one feature at a time

  • Our biggest obstacle is the sheer scale of trying to include as many games as possible

  • Multiple user personas and deeper research into each type would be helpful for future feature development

REFLECTION

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