On Duty Menu Redesign
Redesigning an MMO’s primary portal to gameplay
PROJECT SUMMARY
Overview
DC Universe Online is a decade-old MMO from one of the world’s most recognizable superhero IPs. It’s a beloved video game with a huge, dedicated player base across multiple platforms (PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC). The On-Duty menu is the main interface that players of DC Universe Online use to engage with the game’s massive omnibus of playable content.
The studio wanted to make ambitious updates to the experience by adding new ways to engage with the decade’s worth of content. As part of the approach, we implemented UX methodologies to guide the formulation of new strategies and to upgrade interfaces to reflect them, as well as redesigning interfaces to reflect them.
The most significant transformation occurred with the On Duty Menu interface, which serves as the primary gateway to the content rewarding players with materials for advancing their characters.
Client:
Dimensional Ink Studios
Roles:
UX • UI • Research
Team:
Cross-disciplinary
Product:
DC Universe Online
The Challenge
As the game progressed over time, not only did the interface start to show inadequacies in its user flow, but the system itself also resulted in leaving many new players stranded in lengthy queues for the older, low-level content. This was predominantly attributed to a scarcity of lower-level players, as a significant portion of the player base had already reached the highest tier of the game.
“The On Duty Menu is where you experience the game 80% of the time. It takes 8 clicks to actually queue for a single piece of content and can take more than an hour for that queue to pop for older content…It needs love.”
-Stakeholder quote
Implementation Guides
Main Landing Page
Quick Play Mode Interface Template
Selecting/Browsing Instances
In Queue
Development Process
RESEARCH
Our research phase kicked off with an audit of the current On Duty UI, followed by gathering player feedback and affinity diagraming for synthesis
Heuristics Analysis
Our initial step involved conducting a heuristic evaluation of the menu to create an internal list of identified issues. The menu fell short of meeting several heuristic standards, outlined as follows:
Visibility of System Status
Users could select multiple runs at once, but there was not a visible record of which had been selected
User control/freedom and Error Prevention
If users wanted to deselect a particular instance, they would have to navigate back to the instance’s specific place within the vast menu.
Recognition rather than recall
If a user had already played a particular instance, they would be “loot locked” from it for a variable amount of time. This status indication would not be given unless the user selected the piece of content first.
Flexibility and efficiency of use
It took users on average 6-8 clicks to begin playing a single piece of content.
After a user had completed their queue, they would need to start from step one in order to begin the queue for the same content again.
Content was categorized using an accordion style, with each category initially in the open state. The amount of content in each category made navigation a lengthy process.
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Users would not be provided an error message if they had not selected a role before beginning the queue
Help and documentation
The system presented an extensive tooltip tutorial without an option for revisiting it.
Player Interviews and Forum Outreach
Our next phase involved conducting 10 in-depth user interviews aimed at gaining insights into our players' perceptions of the On Duty experience.
Furthermore, we extended our outreach through the DCUO forums, enabling us to capture a more diverse range of opinions and feedback from a wider audience, garnering over 150 responses.
The objective was to assemble a robust qualitative dataset that would serve as our foundation moving forward.
To synthesize the data we did an Affinity Diagram workshop. From this, 3 main buckets of pain points were discovered:
Too much time spent waiting
Poor organization is leading to inefficiency
A lack of helpful signifiers for menu functionality
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Interview participants were recruited from the forums. This would potentially introduce a bias in the qualitative data, as it may not fully encompass the perspectives of the entire DCUO player community. Forum users typically consist of individuals who are engaged and passionate about the game, often including those who make in-game purchases. Therefore, it's important to note that this approach might not effectively capture the opinions of the more reserved or the brand new player segments.
Bucket 1: Too much time spent waiting
Certain queues took a long time to pop
When queues took a long time, players lamented not having the ability to “force queue.” Meaning they would like to play the content without a full group.
Bucket 2: Poor organization leads to inefficiency
The amount of steps it takes before being able to queue for content was often described as “annoying”
Newer players often have difficulty understanding how to navigate the menu
The queue resets after each instance is completed, leaving players needing to go back to the On Duty Menu and reselect all of the instances they queued up for previously
Roles must be selected every time a player wants to queue for an instance, and players would prefer the system remember their last choice by default
Bucket 3: Lack of helpful signifiers for menu functionality
Instances are missing contextual information
Players don't have an efficient way to see what they have queued for after doing so
There is no indication of which Feats are associated to particular instances
DEFINING
Solution Workshop
Because we had a myriad of user problems to solve, we ran a workshop to prioritize what we felt were the most important to focus on. The workshop involved:
An affinity diagram of user problems
A series of “how-might-we’s” to address the problems
Dot voting to declare order of importance.
Workshop Synthesis Findings: UX Goals
After completing the workshop, we were able to move forward with a game plan. Here are the results:
Reduce unnecessary clicks
One-time role selection
Provide players with the content that is relevant to them
Promote play of older content
Prevent players from needing to recreate a queue list every time an instance is complete
Let players keep playing through a playlist and friend each other
Make sure we award high level players to play with lower level players while allowing the content to remain challenging for all
The Problem Statement
The On Duty menu suffers from a UI that cannot bear the load of the amount of content it holds, ignored QoL updates, the potential for intolerable queue lengths, and generally poor, hidden, or missing signifiers.
Design Principles
Get them playing
Find ways to get players into content as quickly as possible to remove the annoyance of lengthy queue times
Cater to all levels
Allot focus to the newer players so that the knowledge gap decreases some between elite and casual players
Give players more control
Allow players to manage their gameplay with better, more convenient tools than they currently have
Provide meaningful information
Better indicate player statuses and include more information to tie in both game functionality and lore
The Strategy: Two Journeys
Quick Play
A potential approach that addresses 1/2 of our design principles and several of our UX goals involves incorporating a gaming feature we've dubbed "Quick Play." This feature would enable players of varying skill levels to join forces and engage in balanced content together, receiving rewards scaled to their level. This solves the problem of long queue times, leveling, and inadequate rewards for all players.
Custom Play
We also wished to retain flexibility for players, so we recreated the experience in which players selected specific content. This we named “Custom Play,” where we implemented many of the features that users asked for as improvements to the current On Duty menu.
IDEATION
The ideation phase consisted of exploring manners of organizing IA, including helpful information, and the designing the quickest ways to the content for both Quick and Custom Play
Part 1: Creating the “Quick Play” Experience
Quick play required that the user be able to jump into content almost instantaneously, reducing the total amount of clicks to 3. In order to do that, we had to discern the best hierarchy of categorization based on the established gameplay modes. Based on our user research, we relied on player count as a primary determining factor for how players choose content to play
Rapid Concepting and Testing
We developed many concepts for Quick Play, each experimenting with the hierarchy of the various concept types. After testing all of the concepts and talking through the evolution of the game’s progress system as a whole, we ultimately settled on the design that provides players with the simplest actions and fewest clicks.
Winning Concept:
This concept was chosen because of its clearly defined navigation and drastically reduced interactions
Part 2: Creating the Custom Play Concept
We started with a simple mapping of the content hierarchy to slightly reorganize some of the content. We wanted to stay true to the original organization of the menu, seeing as though the organization of the content wasn’t terrible. It was just that the menu couldn’t scale to meet the ever-expanding content. We did move the special event content into its own category so that its location could be found much easier.
Rapid Concepting and Testing
We experimented with several different pathways to the content. Although the layouts stayed similar, each design improved on its former.
Winning Concept
Experimenting with the navigational structure ultimately led us back to the existing UI’s design, but with a few tweaks. We left the top navigation as is, refactored the Tier and Combat Rating system to allow greater consolidation and a clear leveling pathway. Additionally, we updated the center display to bring in contextual imagery and reward iconography.
TESTING & SYNTHESIS
Recruiting from the elite group of playtesters, we conducted user testing on the full menu. The tests resulted in overwhelmingly positive feedback
Testing Key Takeaways
Overall, this design is seen as a significant improvement from 4/5 of the participants
All 5 participants completed each task without difficulty
The “Favorites” menu was a highly appreciated feature
All quantitative results from the post test survey resulted in no scores lower than 4/5 for the usability metric ratings
View the prototype
Survey Responses
Tested with 5 elite level players remotely
Metrics used: Qualitative and Quantitative
Qualitative user testing and quantitative post-test survey
Ease of Use Total Score: 4.4/5
Overall Experience Score: 4.2/5
Understandability/Intuitiveness Score: 4/5
LEARNINGS & IMPLEMENTATIONS
The ideation phase consisted of exploring manners of organizing IA, including helpful information, and the designing the quickest ways to the content for both Quick and Custom Play
Remove categorizations on the main page
Indicating that there are two categories when the secondary category will only ever hold one item is unnecessary. We recommended removing the “Custom Play” section and adding it to the primary list of game modes.
Create an experience for “Loot Lock” status
We needed to create the UI display for the “Loot Lock” status- a nuance where a player is temporarily prevented from obtaining high level rewards from an instance they have already played. This is to prevent players from farming the instance for the best rewards.
Create and experience for displaying Feats
Improving the feats were one of the most highly requested changes that we make for users. Feats are challenged that players complete while playing the game, and each instance has their own set of feats. Players wanted to be able to view which feats are associated with each instance, so we provided this suggestion with the ability to do so.
Add in player count signifiers in the top nav
Adding in signifiers for indicating player count for the four primary content types (Solos, Duos, Alerts, Raids) would better assist users in understanding which category the want to play.