1st place winning UX Hackathon project involving designing a game with high replayability.
Role: Research, Design
Impact:
This project was part of DubsTech Protothon 2024. I conducted secondary research and utilized user research to identify a design solution for the given problem. I developed user flows and interaction design for the game, and collaborated with my team to make a prototype. I designed a presentation deck with my teammate which was then presented to the Protothon judges and fellow teams.
We were granted 1st place in our category for this project.
This project helped me expand my team collaboration, create work in a very limited timeframe, and allow me to wear a variety of different hats within a project. This project was a lot of fun, and I got to work on something I'm passionate about.
Context: DubsTech Protothon │ Spring 2024
Team: Seamus McPeake, Jennifer Nguyen, Michelle Pei, Sola Chang
Timeline: 24 hours
Methods: Secondary Research, Concept Development
Tools: Figma
The Task
Design a mobile or desktop survival video game concept that has high re-playability at its core.
The Solution
A rogue-like card game battler utilizing variety, randomness, and skill to create high re-playability.
At a glance
My reflection
CHALLENGES
Looking back on success
Working with friends is great, and I had a great time working with everybody on my team, they're all great people. I think because we're friends there were moments where individuals didn't want to step on others ideas. This occasionally resulted in things moving slowly, which was obviously undesirable given the small timeframe.
Working with friends
I'm grateful to have been able to work with such talented people on this project and get experience working in a hackathon, which I had never done before. Additionally, I'd like to thank DubsTech for having this project, their kind words towards our project, and for having a category I was passionate about working on.
01 / PROTOTYPE
Play the prototype here
02 / PRESENTATION
See the presentation here
The context
A hackathon made for HCI students
The task
Create a game that users will never get bored of.
Tasked to design either a mobile or desktop survival video game concept that has re-playability at it's core.
Me and my team briefly discussed the "topic" of the game, to get what the player would be "surviving" out of the way.
Me and my teammate Sola handled this topic pretty quickly. We shot out some ideas and landed on the job application/interview process.
This gave me a great starting point for initial research.
Some of my cohort members invited me to participate in a hackathon centered around the UXD/R process (protothon). I had never participated in one before and was eager to join.
Protothon is a University of Washington registered student organization which creates hackathons centered around design.
Anybody can join, student or not, and designer or not. We competed against 4 other teams in our category.
The goal
Secondary Research
Early Designs
Primary Research
"What creates high re-playability in video-games?"
From the navigation bar and clothing categories to the search bar; users can't find the appointment booking page.
The only way to access styling services is under categories that aren't obvious and require users to access new pages.
"Am I on the right page?" - Participant
RESEARCH QUESTION
Findings a solid foundation from past
success.
With limited time, I looked at publications and online forums to understand what makes players return to a game repeatedly. The consensus pointed to roguelikes and randomness (RNG) as key drivers.
Roguelikes: games with procedurally generated maps and turn based gameplay already lean heavily on RNG. I wondered if blending in another high RNG genre could push replayability even further.
Card games fit well: card drawing mechanics add randomness, while letting players express skill through each turn's choices. I looked at popular titles in both genres for inspiration.
Some popular games that feature designs that lead to high replayability. All of these had impact on our design.
Looping my team in for these findings helped us
draft early designs.
I had mentioned to my team that 1 on 1 turn based battles, similar to something like Pokémon could serve as a basis for the interview style battles.
My team and I collectively decided we would do individual game design drafts for an hour and come back to loop one another in for ideas.
Integrating rogue-like gameplay systems into a card game to make something unique.
By looping in our primary researcher we were able to get in touch with our users.
Our primary researcher constructed a survey for 12 participants and interviews for 3 of those survey participants.
We recruited participants with a variety of video-game experience, and particularly experience with rogue-likes and card games.
We wanted to make sure that that users who would be playing our game enjoyed the mechanics we implemented, the concept, and that the style was something users resonated with.
Final Designs
With just 30 minutes to spare we had everything turned in on time.
A presentation was given to the judges of the protothon along with all other participants via Zoom.
01 / PROTOTYPE
Play the prototype here
02 / PRESENTATION
See the presentation here
"The exploration of the concept is solid. The visuals and graphics produced by the team are excellent, and their discussion of research is thorough. The concept is intriguing, drawing parallels to games like Geometry Dash. An interesting suggestion is to integrate the concept into a language learning like Duolingo for navigating through levels by conversing with different bosses. This would tie the motivation of learning and gaining value from playing the game daily or weekly. The design is fun, and there's a touch of narrative humor throughout."
- Protothon Judge
"The exploration of the concept is solid. The visuals and graphics produced by the team are excellent, and their discussion of research is thorough. The concept is intriguing, drawing parallels to games like Geometry Dash. An interesting suggestion is to integrate the concept into a language learning like Duolingo for navigating through levels by conversing with different bosses. This would tie the motivation of learning and gaining value from playing the game daily or weekly. The design is fun, and there's a touch of narrative humor throughout."
- Protothon Judge
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