UX lead on Mini Guide: User journey mapping, wireframing, UI design, user research, IA design
As the UX lead for the campaign vertical, I worked closely with the game designers on the core game loop. An important part of this was requirement gathering and designing the hierarchy of the information architecture for each step in the flow as well as the structure of the flow as a whole. Above are examples of the campaign progression screen, the world map and a ‘Meetup’ which is where the player chooses an event. For each of these steps in the flow I created detailed mid-fidelity wireframes which underwent many iterations as we play tested the design with our panel of users. I worked closely with the technical artists to circulate the vision for these screens as they evolved into their final form.
UX lead on ‘Side Bets’: User journey mapping, wireframing, UI design, user research, IA design
The ‘Side Bets’ feature added an exciting new dynamic to the game, allowing players to place a bet with another racer before the event. This was a challenge in terms of the information architecture and layout as there was a lot of crucial information the player needed access to. The design for this feature underwent many iterations as I worked closely with the game design team to get the balance of the information right. For this project I created a low-fidelity prototype to help circulate the design and align with key stakeholders which allowed us to make decisions and move forward quickly to playtest.
UX lead on ‘First Touch’: User journey mapping, user flows, IA design, wireframing, user research, motion design
I’ve included the image above purely to give an idea of the length of the player journeys which have to be considered when working on a large game like NFS: Unbound. The ‘First Touch’ experience was designed to ease the player into game and represented about 30m of game time. I worked on a spreadsheet that listed everything in the game that should be considered for onboarding and used a value/effort ranking system to prioritise a subsection of these to focus on.
One essential part of the onboarding experience was to ensure all players understood the basic driving controls including how to drift. Where possible we used immersive, diegetic feedback as well as logic that prevented information appearing about controls the player had already used.
For some of these player journeys I took screen recordings of the game and created videos to demonstrate the timing of crucial messaging and feedback which helped create alignment across the leadership team and could be used as guide for developers as we implemented.