Roles

Research

UX/UI Design

Product Design

Branding & Identity

Deliverables

User Surveys

User Personas

Competitive Analysis

User Stories

User Flows

Wireframes

Mockups

User Testing

Prototypes

Branding

Content Strategy

Site Map

Usability Testing

Prefrence Tests

Tools

Figma

Sketch

InVision

Usability Hub

Draw.io

Atom

Github

Codepen

and others...

Duration

7 Weeks

Problem

Black Desert Online has an economic system that has very low profit margins on elastic goods, this leads to it being difficult to know what to produce as a new user. To compound this problem, when someone does find a profitable item to produce, they do not share it, because the market can not handle many users producing the same good.

Solution

Desert Paradigm allows users to imput their personal data into a spreadsheet and find the most profitable item for them to create given the current market. This can be done even though their is no public API available. This is because users are able to audit out of date items and update their information, then share it with other users.

Discovery and Research

Since I was my own client for this project, my first step was to research what other options were available in the marketplace currently. After looking over what competitors in the market had to offer I created four competitive analyses for what were objectively the strongest contenders.

Using what I learned from the competitive analysis I created a survey to find what features and monetization plans would resonate the best with the game’s community.

After getting the results from the survey, I compiled my findings into a report, and then created two user personas that best fit the demographics I found.

Survey Results

Survey Results

First Persona

  • Frank W.

  • Age: 20
  • Occupation: Student
  • Location: Houston, TX
  • Gender: Male
  • Tier: Harcore
  • Motivations: Frank is a student and still living at home by himself. His college life keeps him busy, but he also spends a large amount of his time playing video games and secretly aspires to be a professional video game player. Because of this Frank spends nearly as much time playing video games as he does on his college life. Frank’s parents give him a monthly allowance to live on so most of his budget goes to his hobby. Frank is very familiar with technology and would feel comfortable using any sort of device.
  • Goals:
           1. Be able to gain an advantage over other game players to stand out
            2. Save time with life skill math calculations to make time for his schedule
            3. Find accurate data quickly to gain an advantage over others in field
  • Frustrations:
           1. Lack of time to tweak lots of complicated settings
            2. Is on a fixed income and cannot afford more monthly fees
            3. Does not want to learn manually put in data.
  • Bio: Frank is a student at Houston University who lives with his parents to save money. He walks two miles to campus each morning to take his classes and study then in the afternoon he heads home and plays Black Desert Online until he heads to bed. He has been having He has been having trouble breaking into the professional gamer community but believes with hard work he will make it.
  • Quote: “I want to be the very best like no one ever was!”

    • Second Persona

  • Sean H.

  • Age: 26
  • Occupation: Journeyman Framer
  • Location: Chicago, IL
  • Gender: Male
  • Tier: Casual
  • Motivations: Sean loves to work outdoors and build things in the chicago area. Sean can easily lose track of time and often loses track of time because he gets so involved in what he is doing. Sean also likes to play videogames with his wife as a way of connecting with her, however he does not want to play as much as she does so he looks for ways to be able to keep up with her while still having time to do the things he enjoys doing.
  • Goals:
           1. Help keep his video game playtime down while being able to keep up
            2. Keep track time played in his video game.
            3. Find an easy way to spend time with his wife.
  • Frustrations:
           1. Unable to use a cellphone for data collection while at home
            2. Only has access to one monitor on his older computer
            3. Has not found good support material for his wife’s current favorite game
  • Bio: Sean is a young, working professional in a big city. He’s worked at a number of large construction firms in Chicago, and is now leading running his own small pole barn framing company. While not afraid of technology, He sees it more as a required tool that helps him connect with his wife while she enjoys her hobby. He commutes into the city by bus. He’s interested in stamp collecting. He loves trying a new restaurant every night if possible.
  • Quote: “I want technology to make my life easier without distracting me from doing what I love”

    • Information Architecture

    Creating the user story for this project was actually quite easy, because of all the pre work I had done earlier. I already had a long list of possible features I wanted to add, and assigned importance ratings to the features based on what the users said they wanted. The basic navigation, login, and other admin commands were also included in the mvp.

    After creating the mvp for the project, I started working on user flows, a site map, and a content strategy. Thankfully this time the user flows were relatively basic, and did not need much tweaking after the initial design.

    After finishing the pre-work for the information architecture step, I started on a set of wireframes, including a landing page. I also made a prototype at this time and got some initial feedback from co-workers and conducted three usability tests. The test script and test notes are provided in the deliverables folder.

    User Story

    Black Desert Online - User Stories
     As aI want to... So that I can...Importance
    New User New userCreate an account Begin personalizing my new account. High
         
    Returning UserReturning userLog into my account Upload, store, create and share my files. High
         
    All UsersAll usersCreate and edit itemsKeep market data up to dateHigh
     All usersAdd personal character informationHave a customized optimization table, with personalized resultsHigh
     All usersBe able to update my worker node dataSo I can figure out the best place to put my workersHigh
     All usersBe able to see a top 10 things to do listSo I dont have to look all around the site to figure out what is bestHigh
     All usersSee median market data from all usersSo that the updating of the market data is less time consumingHigh
     All usersImport and export data from other usersSo if I screw up my own data or if new content comes out I dont have to fix everything myselfMedium
     All usersSee graphs of my dataJust to help visualize how my time is being spentMedium
     All usersSearch for specific items and nodesSo I can save myself timeMedium
     All usersBe able to toggle on and off median dataIn case median data is not giving good resultsMedium
     All usersBe able to chat with other logged on usersSo I can ask questions and help others get familiar with the program.Low
     All usersBe able to log in through discordSo I can log in for the first time easierLow
     All usersHave combat statistics as well as lifeskill statisticsSo I have everything I need in one toolLow
     All usersHave a printable copy of most dataRefrence said printout to quickly see my dataLow
     All usersHave a mobile version of the websiteSo I can use my cellphone to look at the data easier.Low

    Example User Flow

    Landing Page Wireframe

    Alchemy Recipes Wireframe

    Worker Data Wireframe

    Visual Design

    The visual design process started out with me sketching some things out on paper, and putting in writing what I wanted the brand characteristics to be. After a sufficient ammount of sketches and ideas had built up, I transitioned to the computer and started to further refine and eliminate ideas.

    To create a color pallet and typography, I started with creating a moodboard that fit the criteria of my brand characteristics, and let the ideas from the mood board bleed over into the creation of a color palette and typography for the style guide.

    After creating a style guide I started building the high fidelity mockups and prototype. I also performed additional usability testing in this phase. The feedback from these mockups and the prototype was easily the most informative I had in the project, and went through many iterations before I was happy with the feedback I was getting.

    Getting Thoughts on Paper

    Refining the Design on the Computer

    Mood Board

    Color Palette

    First High Fidelity Mockup

    Usability Test Refinements

    High Fidelity Mockup Variation

    Final Prototype and Testing

    In this phase, I started putting on more polish to the prototype, and performed a few more usability tests. From these usability tests I created several options for what the final design could be. This is where I did the most preference tests to really nail down what the average user would like the most from a set of multiple polished designs. After selecting a final prototype, the final deliverable package was double checked for organization and noted in a way that would help developers understand the project easier.

    Example Prefrence Test

    Reflection

    The most difficult part of this task was creating a form that would easily allow cross referencing items and creation methods. There are hundreds of variables to consider when trying to figure out the best item to create, and we had to figure out a way to organize them in a way that would make sense to the user, and developers alike. We also had to try to minimize the amount of user input by auto filling in as many variables as possible. Another consideration was that not all users were interested in the same data, so we had to find a way to show as much targeted data to the user as possible, while keeping the need for them to customize to a minimum.

    I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project, and would have loved to tweak and refine, and add more options to the project. However knowing when to put the pencil down is also a skill. Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions or just enjoy chatting about design feel free to contact me. Design is a topic I can talk about forever and never get bored.