Mobile App Redesign
User Research • Competitive Research • Sketching • UX/UI
Everything contained on this page is personal work I have taken on independently with no involvement by Clubhouse.
Challenge
The gaming industry is expanding and shows no sign of slowing down. Our challenge was to explore how the social-audio app Clubhouse could enter the gaming market through integrating new features that gamers would need in order to complement their gameplaying habits.
Scope
My Role: UX Researcher and Facilitator
Timeline: 3 weeks
Team: Anvita Challagolla, Ayana Terauchi, Elizabeth Gartner, Josh Ignacio
Results
While gamers reported that they are happy with their current social platforms, our new design made them more likely to try a social-audio app to complement their gameplay.
Research
Research Objective
To understand how social platforms were catering to gamers better understand the pain points, motivations, and goals of online gamers. See objective plan.
Comparative Analysis
Our team looked at major online gaming social platforms and learned that these platforms:
Offer perks to monetize/encourage players to level up on the platform.
Recommend features to promote engagement on the platform.
Integrate other content sharing platforms.
User Interviews
We recruited online gamers from our personal network and conducted 5 in-depth interviews to explore their experiences. Grouping our findings into common categories revealed 3 trends that we synthesized into “I” statements:
I seek out external resources to advance my gameplay.
I play online games because I like the challenge.
I don’t like the toxic social behavior of other online gamers.
See screener questions and interview guide.
Then I crafted our persona to help synthesize our research and keep the user at the center of our design process. After considering Steve’s main pain points and goals, we brainstormed several how might we statements and chose to focus on the following:
How might we help our users advance in their chosen game while creating a positive social environment?
Ideate
Brainstorm Workshop
Next, I facilitated our group’s brainstorming workshop to explore potential solutions. I set the following rules:
Go for quantity not quality
Build off of each other’s ideas
Individual exercise - so hold conversation till the end
Feel free to think visually
At the end of our brainstorm, we had 40 ideas so I facilitated a multi-voting process where each of us had four votes to allocate to the ideas that we thought best solved the how might we statement. From this, four ideas seemed promising to address Steve’s challenges and goals. However, if I were to do this process again I would have liked to include people outside of our design team, such as online gamers, Clubhouse users, and Clubhouse employees.
Our group decided that creating an easier way to access expert conversations about online gaming and a social rating system were the ideas we wanted to sketch out and ultimately test with users.
Design
Sketching
Next, we sketched out dozens of possible screens that would allow our users to find an expert conversation. Throughout this process, I regularly referenced our persona to remind my team of who we were designing for (i.e. Would Steve know what to do given the information on this screen?).
Wireframes
After combining the best features from our sketches we transferred our sketches into wireframes so we could test our ideas with potential users. I was tasked with creating the frames you see on the right. The goal here was to communicate just enough information so users would be able to complete the tasks.
Test and Iterate
Usability Test - Round 1
We gave 5 online gamers who resembled our persona each three tasks to test the integration of our new features into Clubhouse’s design:
Download content to listen to later
Find an expert conversation in your favorite video game
Report unethical behavior
While all users were able to complete all tasks, all users were also confused about the expert indicator we designed. For example, some users thought the indicator meant that the expert was “available.” See usability test guide.
To better understand our user’s experience with our prototype, I created a journey map to capture the likes, dislikes, and questions from our usability test.
Design Iteration
To address the confusion around the expert indicator, we sketched out a variety of ways to make the indicator more clear. We settled on changing the color from black to blue and adding a text description as well. Next our whole team worked to translate our mid-fi prototype into a realistic version of the Clubhouse app. We stayed consistent with Clubhouse’s branding during this process.
Usability Testing - Round 2
We conducted 5 usability tests of our new design and we found that all users were able to complete all tasks and 0 users found the new expert indicator confusing. See test guide here.
Next Steps
Our team found that Clubhouse does have an opportunity to attract more gamers to their platform by making expert conversations more accessible and by implementing a rating system to address toxic online behavior. However, if our team were to continue with this project we would:
Conduct more research into the effectiveness of a rating system to address toxic social behavior.
Interview expert gamers to understand why they choose to share their content on some platforms but not others.
Build out a more in-depth service blueprint to show how Clubhouse could implement this solution.