Fleet Commanders
Overview
A new category of characters comprising the most impactful heroes / villains in Star Trek bringing power to officers and fleet via deep individual investment as they set the strategy from the player's base. Fast and a very complicated project and a startup vibe, with a lot of iterations on design to find the apt experience for players.
Role: UX DRI
Audience
Level 40+ Players-
Give a new avenue for power that incentivises upgrading the rest of the content.
Level 25-39 Players-
Diversify the grind needed in mid level via event management to achieve extra ship power.
Level 15-24 Players-
Integrate with Star Trek lore via most known characters in an IP from early in the game.
Core loop
Progression loop
Approach
I used Design Sprint Methodology with the team to quickly develop and test the
idea with stakeholders and players.
Day 1
Defined key questions and a long-term goal.
Made a simple map of the feature. Highlighted the key targets and potential pain points.
Day 2
Pick inspiring products/ services and highlight what makes them best and how they solve for our pain points from previous task.
Sketching a detailed, mocks and flow that emphasizes critical thinking over artistry. At this point we get a quick buy in from Engineering, Product Managers, Game Designers and UI Designers.
Day 3
At this point UX takes over, decides which of the above sketches and ideas are best and makes a quick prototype.
Day 4
From Day 4 onwards, all the teams are aligned basic goals and how the feature will shape up. I start to refine and shape the flow and the mockups to schedule a playtest with out player. Based on the feedback from the playtest I recommend changes.
Mockups used for playtest
Command centre (Homepage).
Hub for Fleet Commanders, where players can slot them in a chair and activate their abilities to get buffs across the game.
On this page players can:
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Assign or remove an Commander.
When a Commander is assigned:
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Remove the Commander.
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Activate their Primary Ability(Talent)
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View their list of locked or unlocked Officer/Commander.
Commander details screen, a player can:
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View Skills/Talents.
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Activate their Primary Ability(Talent)
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Upgrade their Commander.
Commander skill tree, a player can:
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View Skills/Talents.
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Upgrade Skills/Talents.
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Activate Talents.
Results:
After learning from the play-test we found out major areas that needed tweaks, for example, players wanted to make sure they can differentiate between Talents and skills and within skills they wanted to be clear which can be activated and which cannot. I took all these feedbacks and incorporated it in my design to better reflect feedback.
High Fidelity Mockups
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Results
On the left is a snippet of our Customer satisfaction survey to further understand why some players loved it and what could be improved.
My UX solution onboarded and helped players learn the feature easily which increased engagement, leading to increase in our revenue by 7.5%.
On the left is player data on, "It was easy to source a
fleet commander and get started with one".
Takeaway
From my previous project I learned, I was going back and forth with stakeholder feedback, leading to more time spent on Figma and hardly any time left for Player testing.
For Fleet commanders I applied the design sprint methodology and focused my efforts on Secondary research- study our competitor, and I collaborated closely and early and aligned them to get their buy in. Resulting to more time spent on player testing and making changes from player testing.
I was able to deliver the designs with feedback and playtest before deadline and saved cost.