A Cog in the Cosmic Machine
Role: UX Design Lead
During production, the original UX Lead left the project and I was chosen to fill the position. While working on A Cog in the Cosmic Machine, I had several responsibilities as the only UX designer on the team. I ran user tests after every milestone. I worked with designers to address pain points in their designs. I designed low-fidelity wireframes for screens in the game and I worked with programmers to implement the low-fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes into Unity.
To help communicate the player experience to the team, I created a user flow for the game. With this user flow, I was able to point out known and potential experience issues the player might have. Over the course of development, I kept the user flow update to date so it was always relevant.
To prepare for wireframing in the future, I developed the information architecture (I/A) for the project. The I/A establishes the organization of content that the design team wanted on screen. This informed me what information needed to be included in each wireframe.
When wireframing, I started by using the I/A to determine the necessary content. In Adobe XD, I began wireframing the screen. The wireframe would be reviewed by the UX professor, the design team, and the art team. After making changes based on feedback, I would hand the wireframes to the art team so they could make the high-fidelity wireframes.
After completing the wireframe, I implemented it into Unity. I set up the hierarchy and prefabs needed in the Unity scenes so that the layout in the engine matched the wireframe as closely as possible. After the scenes were set up, I worked with the programming team to make sure the UI functionality was correct.
After each milestone, I conducted user tests with five users from the target audience of the game. User tests were recorded over Zoom and I noted their comments and facial expressions. At specific parts of the test, I would ask pre-specified questions and record the responses. After user tests, I would write up the findings and share them with the team.
This game was created for my senior game capstone at Bradley University, which was my final game project at the school. This project was done completely remotely over two semesters and involved over twenty people. With team members located anywhere from the West Coast of the U.S. to Ireland, there was an eight-hour time difference for the team.