A gaming metaverse that enable the formation & autonomy of diverse gaming communities.
Logitech Gaming is a subsidiary of Logitech and leading innovator of gaming technologies. Their mission is to advance the performance and passion for play through unrivalled design and technology innovation.
Gaming at its essence is play and play happens universally everywhere, with everyone. The environments in which we play can vary with a diverse range of mindsets, moods, friends, cultures, and social contexts. Moreover, gamers can play across any of the aforementioned environments, anytime they wish.
Logitech G's Design Team challenged Berkeley Innovation, a student-led design consultancy at UC Berkeley to address the problem statement: Embrace all play environments. Given this is quite the broad scope, we were also challenged to consider how digital tools might help users engage with a more diverse range of communities, that will ultimately enable more versatile gaming experiences.
My involvement in this project started as the user research lead, where I took on the first sprint of the semester. Being a returning consultant in Berkeley Innovation, I took initiative throughout roadblocks or pivotal moments later on in the semester as well.
Neighborhood is a metaverse integrated into Discord. By introducing the limitations of the physical world into a digital space, communities interact in fresh, immersive, playful ways. Whether it's jamming out at public concerts, designing interior spaces, or just chilling out in a friend's private room, there's an opportunity to bond in every pixel of Neighborhood.
• User perceptions and behaviour towards play and gaming
• How people game (motivations and limitations)
• The community or environment they game in
• How gamers form relationships with other gamers
• Contextual observations around gaming setup, devices, equipment, etc.
After affinity mapping and combining our hefty amount of research, we noticed 3 overarching themes (the 3 I's), which were interaction, immersion, and identity. You will soon see that these 3 concepts are extremely intertwined, and we were curious to see how we might create experiences or touch points in gaming where all 3 overlap. To learn more about what each theme entails, read about our key insights below and take a look at our concept map later on...
We began the project with the aim of better understanding our target users through a variety of research methods. As the research lead, I oversaw the making of our research resources, including interview guides, survey drafts, and diary study templates.
After conducting a ton of research, we observed patterns and attempted to group them preliminarily into groups. Broadly speaking, we found that the concept of gaming, while varying greatly from player to player, can be grouped into three main principles: interaction, immersion, and identity.
We discovered that gamers search for play experiences that involve at least one of these factors.
Realizing that gaming differs quite drastically from player to player, due to varying environments, skill levels, motivations, and more, I decided to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Taking our groups and sub-themes from affinity mapping, we constructed a concept map to connect recurring insights to gaming motivations, gaming mechanisms, and behaviour.
Before moving into ideation, I led the team in synthesizing our research findings into top insights to better guide our next steps.
Using our potential problem spaces, we brainstormed HMW statements to help guide the next phase of ideation. After brainstorming, we identified a pattern that connects the most prominent problem spaces into something that resembles a chronological gamer journey...
These HMW statements were used to guide the next ideation phase.
After conducting concept testing on 12 gamers, we received feedback identifying the pitfalls of our initial concept. This put a wrench in our workflow, and decreased team morale as a whole. Although I was not the sprint leader for this part of the project, I assisted in helping reframe and bring our project back on track. This included hosting activities to get us thinking divergently and reflecting back on our research insights to ensure we stayed grounded in human-centred thinking.
First, many people would not use the app more than once — its predicted usage was extremely short-lived in that people would use it once to attempt to find a community, and never again. Moreover, people voiced strong preferences for instant gratification in community finding. Our concept placed emphasis on reviewing information and statistics before committing to joining a community. However, people wanted to be automatically matched rather than having to wait for some sort of admin to approve their requests. The legitimacy of random people running potential community searches was also put into question, as people felt more comfortable joining communities with mutuals rather than with random people. Finally, participants wanted more personalization features on their personal and community profiles, since this allows them to gauge the vibe of groups and provides another form of criteria vital for community finding.
Moving forward, I asked the following questions to our team to guide our pivot:
1. How can we make the process of community finding immersive and engaging (i.e not short-lived or dull), while maintaining genuine interaction?
2. How can we weave real-life interaction into virtual settings to promote differentiation of communities and communication of their vibes? (personalization)
3. How can we maintain and strengthen communities beyond just finding them?
4. What happens to communities once they've been formed? How can we be involved in its later stages?
Our concept testing insights pointed towards pivoting and reconsidering our research insights. At this point, my goal was to re-evaluate how to address our HMWs and leverage both rounds of research results to build a more effective space for finding community.
Backtracking to our concept testing, research insights, and guiding questions, we defined our main product goals as the following:
Our team explored ideas that mimic real life interactions in virtual spaces. Based on our research insights, we determined that exploring the idea of a metaverse (a virtual space where people interact in a simulation of a real world) would be most worthwhile given the following analysis of 3 HMW questions pertinent to our research.
Neighborhood is a metaverse integrated into Discord. By introducing the limitations of the physical world into a digital space, communities interact in fresh, immersive, playful ways. Whether it's jamming out at public concerts, designing interior spaces, or just chilling out in a friend's private room, there's an opportunity to bond in every pixel of Neighborhood.
One key insight we found was that a connection to reality in virtual spaces encourages a level of personal attachment, because things feel more valuable (could be the characters, surroundings, etc). We see that this has become especially relevant during Covid-19 to recreate tangible activities virtually. So what does this mean for us? Well, we see that immersion can anchor interactions to shared moments or memories. To that end, we leveraged a 3D metaverse to create an immersive environment and amplify the genuineness & individualization of community finding.
Whether it's getting invited to someone's place, or receiving a compliment on your outfit, acts of kindness from strangers allow one to feel chosen and recognized. Similarly, in virtual environments, one research participant noted that transactions like accepting friend requests or receiving an invite to visit one's igloo [in Club Penguin] made them feel supported and special. We created personal hubs to promote self expression and privacy. By introducing a level of exclusivity through invite-only private spaces, we plant the seeds for vulnerable in-game experiences where people can share stories, opinions, etc. which reveal emotional rawnesses necessary to develop the trust of others.
As someone who doesn't play video games and was overall very foreign to concept of gaming, tackling this problem space was definitely an intimidating feat. Since my first project with Berkeley Innovation was more user research-heavy, I was excited to weave storytelling techniques and narrative-building strategies into building a prototype grounded in user insights and feedback.
Over the course of the semester, our team encountered several obstacles from concept testing difficulties, multiple pivots, and dealing with a large scope. Although rather stressful and chaotic in the moment, this taught me the importance of adaptability and reframing. Given our problem space was quite exploratory in nature, I learnt about the importance of considering various angles in decision making processes and ensuring we ground all our work in the insights of our users.
Working on this project was a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows, but it helped me grow as a designers and I'll definitely be carrying forth the lessons I've learnt into future projects.
meet team Stardew! <3
