GL Editor
por Quique Rodríguez @quiquerodriguez1984
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(2019 to date)
Case study
GL Editor. Formative gaming creation without coding
Problem
A videogame is a tremendously complex product: databases, animations, scenarios, characters, narrative .... Its creation has always been seen as something only within the reach of programmers, designers and scriptwriters in a long and expensive process.
Solution
Why not bringing all that to the people? With this tool, it is possible to generate interactive 3D video games with complex content without touching a single line of code.
My role
Since it is a completely new product with little benchmarking capability, I was tasked with designing the entire user experience (UX) of the project from scratch, always within a context of continuous improvement.
What I did
· Product technical definition along with CEO, CPO and PO.
Tools: Jira, Confluence
· Conceptualization and ideation (flowcharting + sketching).
Tools: Hand drawing, Draw.io
· Design (wireframing).
Tools: Sketch + Craft
· Functional prototyping at different levels of detail.
Tools: In Vision
· Knowledge transfer for UX writing and UI
· UI/Dev iterations follow up for MVP, Beta and releases.
Tools: Jira, Asana
· User interviews on possible features and tool perception.
Tools: Google Suite (Meet, Docs)
The proccess
Goal
Generate gamified training software from scratch without coding.
Stakeholders
Mid aged content creators with:
· Average tech profile.
· Work driven desktop apps use.
· Casual mobile edition and gaming apps use.
User tasks
· Build a storyline from scratch or include its content in a predetermined template.
· Inform the final user about learning goals.
· Configure languages, scenarios and characters.
· Translate into other languages.
· Save and edit the project, or publish it on a user platform.
A glimpse: story characters configuration
Problem
During the project, having all game characters at one point arose as a major need, in order to establish a single source of truth and avoid the focus loss we noticed users were experiencing in the storyline building proccess.
Solution
A project-level character configuration table is proposed. User can:
- Add new characters.
- Edit and organize existing characters.
- Delete characters, as long as they have no use in the storyline.
Impact
At the beginnings of the project, the Business stakeholders put certain ideas on the table -some of them with sketches- in which I noticed a number of pain points, the most serious of which was a navigation system that got the user stuck when moving between sections, levels and scenes of the script.
After conducting some quick usability testing sessions and subsequent interviews with other internal stakeholders, I found that no one understood what was being proposed.
As an alternative, I suggested a more visual and intuitive structure, based on:
· A single nav bar with tabs that allowed navigation between sections without blocking.
· A nested cascade script system for levels, scenes and elements, from which a flow of pieces decided what was happening in the game. This user-centered path reduced the cognitive load by putting in value user abilities.
When showed to Business people, they understood the frictions of their initial ideas, which they did not recognize in the first place. The new structure made a decisive impact on the entire tool, which became visible in the first metrics obtained after the first MVP test with real users:
· 92.2% Applicability.
Question: Do you think Editor would be useful in your professional field?
· 94.6% Recommendation.
Question: How likely are you to recommend Editor to a friend?
· 49% NPS (% Promoters - % Detractors)
We were on the right track!
Takeaways
· Peer makes life. Working in peer design with engineers saves valuable time in the processes.
· UX writing first. Involving UX writers during the prototyping stage, and not after it, allows them to better understand user needs, have more context to propose texts and avoid misunderstandings regarding the functional proposal.
· Anticipation. Business stakeholders' decisions are often holistic, but difficult or risky to design. Seeking sufficient margin to anticipate an alternative proposal can not only redirect possible product frictions, but mark an overall happy path for it in the future.
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