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Entertainment / Social Media / '22

GAMEOVA

Created in a 48-hour designathon, GameOVA is a social media platform dedicated to gaming and esports.

With the ability to rate the positivity of other players, GameOVA aims to accentuate kindness and cut down the toxicity and misogyny that plagues the gaming industry.

We won Best Overall out of 38 teams 😎

TIMELINE
48 hours
TEAM
4 designers
Two phones showing the GameOVA feed and a user profile UX Scene Designathon 2022 winner, Best Overall

Problem

When choosing an idea for this competition, I drew inspiration from my own experiences… and I love video games.

It should come as no surprise that the gaming industry and community are, for the most part, misogynistic and hostile. Where toxicity breeds toxicity, members of the gaming community suffer the same lack of accountability any anonymous online persona offers and can often find themselves surrounded by an audience who enables their negative behaviors.

One of the prompts was to create a platform that encourages inclusivity in 48 hours, so my team and I decided to address some of these issues and create a platform that fosters positivity or at least mitigates the harassment and toxicity that has become synonymous with the industry itself.

Video game character illustration
Don't ask me what my rank is, it's a sensitive subject

Research

Due to the time constraint, we decided to conduct a survey on Reddit, aiming to understand how and where such harassment occurs.

  • Women feel unsafe using their microphones in games to communicate with their teammates, opting to not use the mic or play the game altogether.
  • Players felt that current methods of banning or punishing toxic players seemed insufficient.
Survey chart: 70% of 20 respondents do not use voice chat

Discovery

Once the mood goes down, it rarely goes back up.

Because the outcome of team-based competitive games tend to depend heavily on communication, a player who's on the receiving end of harassment will stop putting in effort and talking, leading to a lost game and even worse mood.

Persona and journey map for Wendy, a competitive player
  • Players use voice chat less often out of fear of being harassed or feel the need to change their existing voice.
  • Players interact less with the community and stay in their private group of friends.
  • Players have to hide who they are in order to feel safe.
  • Existing punishments or reporting systems don’t feel sufficient.

How might we… make gaming a better experience?

How Might We questions and ideation sticky notes

Our How Might We questions allowed us to better focus on coming up with potential ideas for dealing with the problem.

One solution we thought of was an entirely new reporting/moderation platform that would feature a tribunal system of sorts that would allow the platform to crowdsource women and minority gamers to help moderate player behavior. However, we felt that this would be too complex of an idea for a 48-hour designation.

Keeping in mind our contextual limitations, we felt like a social media platform focusing on gaming was an appropriate level of complexity and would still allow us to address the issue directly.

Solution

Our team came up with an idea for an app that integrates with various games and allows players to rate each other based on positivity. We used a Moscow map to decide our must have and should have features:

  • positivity scoring system
  • social media elements
  • a QR code scanner to bridge the computer game to the app
  • overlays that would appear in a game once a desktop extension is downloaded for our app.
MoSCoW map of must, should, could and won't have features

Initial designs

Paper sketches of the home, feed and search pages Paper sketches of the games and profile pages Low-fidelity wireframes of eight GameOVA screens

Iteration

Using Maze, a user testing platform, we tested our app with 5 users by prompting them to complete 3 navigation tasks in GameOVA. Through their journeys through our app as well as their answers to some follow-up questions, we identified a few usability issues that we addressed instantly, such as unclear buttons and confusing icons.

Before and after: splash screen without the Riot ID option

I thought that I could log in with my Riot ID here

Removed the "Or use Riot ID"

Before and after: separate QR scanner and add post buttons, with labeled navigation

How would I scan my game so I can rate the people I played with?

I thought this button is only for adding a new post…

Made the QR Scanner and Add a Post two different buttons.

Added labels for easy indication and changed the Games icon for less confusion.

Final design

Become part of your favorite games' communities

Final screens for game communities

Rate players after games and keep communities safe

In-game desktop overlays showing player positivity scores Final screens for scanning a QR code and rating players after a game

Retrospection

Summary

While the issues this platform aims to tackle are part of a much larger problem ingrained in the gaming industry and culture (and would definitely not be solved in two days), this app would provide extra incentive to be kinder to others in a space where toxicity and harassment are expected. GameOVA wants to connect communities and offer gamers a social media platform built around their interests, while also giving players more control over their gameplay experience with the player rating system.

Lessons Learned

Being constrained to 48 hours for the entire process was a huge challenge that left me with a lot more appreciation for good communication and prioritization/time management. Decisions had to be made quickly, but we also wanted to give everyone ample time to express their thoughts and ideas.

I was also able to learn a lot about Figma from my teammates and enhanced my ability to use components to save time and allow for global changes across our files.

Next project

Work at Epic →