UX Portfolio

I revitalized all of the recruitment materials to improve their compliance with ethical APA standards, but I noticed that we had a history of a very low sign-up rate. To match Volition's research recruiting page with its values toward equity and accessibility, I conducted a usability test with prospective users who had never used the site before. This revealed significant issues with information architecture, visibility, banner blindness, and copy clarity. I forwarded a screenshot of the page with the issues and my solutions to our webmaster, who implemented many of the changes. This resulted in a 200% increase in sign-ups in just a week's time.

Below: Original design with my observations and solutions.

Below: After most of the changes were implemented.

Telemetry showed that players didn't use the wingsuit mechanic in the overworld. To encourage its use, the Missions team built a 5-sequence event in which players were provided comprehensive in-game onboarding and tutorials to learn its usage. Due to time and budget constraints, I elected to curate a game-specific heuristic analysis to catch errors (and inform decisions to design cuts). I completed the analysis in parallel with my research partner at GamesLab to make sure there was more than one pair of eyes on the study.

The team had been concerned that players wouldn't know where to go when given a path of rings to follow. Below, you can see how chaotic the pathway looked. There was no clear end point or direction to follow, and the difficulty spiked unpredictably between challenges. In addition, the wingsuit mechanics were unclear and instructions were vague.

Below: The original start of the wingsuit challenge. The mission was designed to take around 1 minute to complete, but I couldn't even finish it in three hours!

I provided a topline "5 biggest issues" and "5 solid wins" for the team alongside a complete report for their needs. Not even three days later the mission team followed up with me for a post-hoc review to see if I had any other feedback. They had implemented the suggestions that alleviated 99% of the observed problems!

Below: After the changes were implemented (and, of course, polished for release).

Afterward, onboarding was a breeze. Tutorials occurred in-context at the right time, the path from start to finish was clear, and difficulty progressed as players would expect over the course of the 5 challenges.

One of my junior UX Designers doubled as a Missions designer. While working with teams on the earliest DLC release "The Heist and the Hazardous," he expressed a need to conduct usability testing. This was informed by his suspicion that conveyance was inadequate, which would result in players becoming confused, misled, or frustrated when unable to discover where things were or what they did. I helped him run a week-long session of usability studies, the results of which he compiled into a concise report that our Senior Franchise Producer used to direct necessary changes.

Below: Screenshot from the report depicting moments where the Objective Indicator (OI) would be helpful, and conveyance issues repeatedly occurred.

After the production team sent me a 15-page list of things they wanted to test for an upcoming mission (which I personally thought was awesome, but alas, there was only one Eevin), I worked with them to whittle their needs down to most urgent and highest impact: usability and some attitudinal variables. Time constraints and budget determined we would only have one shot at testing with users, so it had to be comprehensive. As such, we tested with an incomplete build and some lorem-ipsum placeholders. That was nothing new.

The results were enough to confirm changes to characters' narratives, move forward with lighting choices, and sculp the utility of the in-game store.

Aside from the research tactics, one of the primary challenges was ensuring that we conveyed that this release was an entirely different mode and completely separate from the main game; I made sure to ask about this, and users confirmed that it was very salient. Win!

Below: Screenshot of a slide from the playtest results presentation depicting successful clarity across multiple usability variables.

Dustfaire was set to be the final Saints Row release ever, so we wanted to go out with a bang. Market research from Deep Silver indicated that players had really enjoyed the LARP segments of the main game, so the game designers developed a brand new district, huge narrative and dialogue style, and multiple side quests for this massive, seven-mission beast.

We got started on Dustfaire as early as we could; this time, the budget and critical team members' PTO were our primary limiting factors. Again, since there was only one Eevin, I prioritized usability testing to make sure players could do what they needed.

I had one week to conduct usability tests across these 7 missions, but only 3 were testable when the time came. In consulting the design team and producers, we concluded that we wanted more in-depth feedback for one mission at a time (as opposed to more shallow feedback across all three). So, we scheduled all Mission 1 participants for Monday, all Mission 2 participants for Tuesday, etc.

To expedite turnaround, I streamed the live session to the designers, writers, programmers, and producers, who volleyed between decisions in a separate Teams channel. I had coached them on appropriate questioning earlier on, so I was confident in allowing them to ask post-test questions as needed (and was impressed!).  

Below: Screenshot from one of the remote moderated usability tests I conducted for Dustfaire. Photo shared with permission.  

The studio was thrilled with the immediacy of the live-streamed usability tests; decisions were made quickly and with clarity, dev teams' energies were replenished, and everyone wanted more! The following week, I curated a series of tutorials and trained our Principal Game Designers on how to run internal playtests, which became a weekly occurrence thereafter. Ultimately, this led to higher-quality materials for the subsequent Dustfaire playtest and therefore enabled us to focus on longitudinal experiences.

With the usability tests under our belt, we recruited 30 players from our target audience to play through all 7 missions and answer questions about each. As predicted, there were additional bugs, usability issues, some accessibility problems, and a variety of polarized opinions.

Below: A high-level view of the affinity diagram analysis for each mission's free-response feedback.

Below: An example of the mission-specific report covering the primary variables of interest and my qualitative assessments.

Ideally, we would have conducted more tests to continuously evaluate whether the changes were in-line with users' needs, but we were at the end of the timeline. As far as I am aware, the teams made as many of the high-level changes as they could under massive time constraints.