Mobile Game Mock-up

Duration: 4 weeks

This is a solo project, based on research that the senior population is growing and they play casual games on mobile devices as a preferred pastime. The senior users prefer cooperative over competitive activities, and games can be a helpful medium to feel empowered and stay connected with people. But despite the trend, there are not enough games developed for the older demographics, plus lack of collaborative games for mobile in general. 

My main focus was to explore usability & accessibility of the game interfaces – if the users had trouble learning or navigating – instead of developing a game level.

I explored user flows, wireframes and GUI design to improve usability and accessibility of the game. I tested a variety of sketching and prototyping tools available, and it was not a linear process.

As a first round of prototype, I made a mock-up phone with cardboard & drew UI screens on papers that you can slide the paper to simulate the screen navigation. The low-fidelity method proved to be effective because it was a quick way to test the user flows while providing a tactile sense of experience. The downside was that both the designer and user needed to be present in person, which was not convenient during pandemic times.

Based on the feedback from the paper prototypes, I chose Adobe XD to build the final prototype, though this was a constant work in progress based on user feedback, so I say it can never be truly finished.

Here is the latest prototype for this project: LINK​​​​​​​

You can follow the link and test it yourself. I suggest that you test it on your desktop because Adobe XD has inherent flaws of sliding between pages, which cannot be disabled.

When you first open the app, you can choose how you would like to play. There is a single or multiple player mode, setting, tutorial, invite friends page, etc. 

The most notable part of this prototype is waiting for a friend to join. You can search for friends, send invitations, and request to play together. You wait for your friend to join, and play.

Inviting friends and waiting to join the game is one of the most interesting component for this prototype. Users mentioned that they felt something was happening in the background even though they knew this was just a mock-up.

The mock-up game is a co-op puzzle, where two players need to work together to solve. Although the game is not real, I was able to simulate the game play. It would be useful to have the voice-chat function so players can discuss with each other.

Among the list of useful insights, the most surprising insight was how the monetisation model of the game influenced the GUI design choices. By monetisation model, I mean whether the game is “one-time purchase” type or “live-game(pay as you go)” type. It changes the UI fundamentally. On the side note, people I interviewed preferred pay-as-you-go because they won’t run out of entertainment when content gets updated regularly.

For future work, it would be great to add tutorial pop-up for first time players, interview the correct user group, and improve the current prototype to make it a functional game.