UX/UI Design | Service Design | Information Architecture
Making Dungeons and Dragons more approachable by simplifying the onboarding process with guided step by step character creation.
Role
Project Lead, Designer
Designers & Researchers
Charles Altieri, Austin Alphonse
3x
faster character creation/onboarding for new players
A typical Dungeons & Dragons session
Research
In order to fully understand the D&D community we hope to improve, we developed a 15 question survey canvasing Dungeons and Dragons players. We wanted to focus on the full spectrum of their D&D experience:
- How do players organize games?
- How often would they like to play?
- What are some of the barriers that prevent them from playing?
Our Findings
- 57% of those surveyed said they would like to play weekly
- 64% said they would prefer to play in private at their home or the home of a friend, although nearly half would be open to playing in public.
- 70% cited scheduling as the primary difficulty with organizing a D&D game.
- “If there was an app to help me create games I might consider playing. I just don’t know anyone who plays”
- “I met a few people from the games I’ve played and its always nice to see them again. You can never have too many friends.”
- “...I would like a sort of tinder for gaming groups, like DM looking for Pathfinder players, 3 to 6 players willing to drive 10 miles. That kind of set up would work really nice I think.”
If there was an app to help me create games I might consider playing. I just don't know anyone who plays.
Solution A: Scheduling
This research brought us to our first solution this service must provide: matchmaking and scheduling groups.
Considering the need for multiple devices to help user’s search and manage their games, these features were initially designed for a desktop web application.
Desktop web application concept
An initial IA assessing the challenge of scheduling
Concept of tablet format & features
Solution B: In Game Aid
Our target audience brought a number of issues surrounding game immersion. Respondents found that after years of video game conditioning, finding experienced players was an additional challenge. To assist in the training of new players, Dungeon Master’s needed to be equipped with a means to provide documents or rules and tips to players during the game.
Solution C: Onboarding
And finally our survey results led us to believe that the onboarding for the game affected many interested players. After some assessment of the game itself it was easy enough to parse out the necessary character creation needs for a player and provided a concept for this process which could be easily done on the phone.
Character creation onboarding on the phone
Just a few features would be enough to create an entire ecology of game organizers
Service Demonstration
Just a few features would be enough to create an entire ecology of game organizers and resources that is not only vast but personable enough to keep parties grounded in their experience. To communicate the idea we created a video detailing a simple user scenario.
Video produced by the team displaying a user journey with the service.
PropertyBase Supertheme UX
