App Design / Research / Design System / 2018 - 2020

Gameloft Distribution

Mobile gaming in emerging markets.

/ Overview

As an old player in the mobile gaming business, Gameloft has also been involved with carriers businesses for a long time. Gameloft Distribution Business has continued creating profitable relationships with carriers even after the App Stores explosion. Carriers are looking for new ways to engage with their customers and Gameloft is there to provide a Gaming platform that aims to improve customer experience. 

/ My role

Market & User Research, Experience & Strategy Design (UX Planning, Wireframes, Prototyping, Personas, Journey Maps), Validation & Usability Testing, Visual Identity & UI Design 

Bringing design freshness & strategy into a 20 years old business.

• Bringing users into Product Development. Making Users count in Product Decisions by Making Product Owners and Business people understand the value of User-Centered Design.
• Design Leadership. Experience & Visual Design. 
• Design Process & Design Practices. 
• Design Identity. 
• Design Culture.

Led the design process for distribution apps in the gaming ecosystem.

Mobile Apps, Web Apps, Kids Apps, PC Stores, Gaming Platforms.

The challenge. Properly framing the problems, this time with the user in mind.

The main problem I discovered and framed was that we lack in fulfilling peoples’ psychological needs of entertainment but I've framed many problems in different work areas.

• Market / Struggling to fight into growing & existing markets. 
• User / Fulfilling people’s psychology need for entertainment. Promising Engagement and Satisfaction to Brands’ Customers but lacking in communicating the real value.
• Business / Lack of understanding of users and user-centered design decisions.
• Product / High complexity of building a fully but easily customizable game store solution. 
• Implementation / Missing expertise to work with Design, Design practices, Process, Approaches, and Implementation. Lack of backed Design Decisions. 

People explore & play video games differently according to market maturity.

Based on research done by Google, Newzoo, and App Annie we unveiled that people play and explore games differently depending on the market maturity. This research weighted a lot considering Gameloft Distribution Business is a worldwide business.

During the user research, we aimed to address the main problems and fulfill the most impactful needs while we fit the company’s development process and business goals.

1. Our psychological need for entertainment. (User Research, Personas, Types of Users, Customer Journey Maps)
2. Why do we play? How do we play? When do we play?
3. Brands’ (Telcos as first Target Audience) struggling to remain relevant to its customers in a fast-changing and fast-growing content consumption and communication markets. (Market Research, Stakeholders, and Sales people’s interviews.)
4. Designing for development teams.

Getting the users into the product decisions

I was able to include the users into the product development process and show the people involved the importance of user-centered design decisions while including the design process successfully into the Agile methodology.

Unveiling deeper insights about users' motivations to play. 

Entertainment is one side of the coin but there is a stronger motivation why users play video games, that’s Escapism, the desire to escape from the banality of everyday life even for a moment. Further study let us discover that Escapism is not the beginning but the end. To achieve Escapism players have to fulfill other needs like Need of Competency, Autonomy, and Relatedness. We mapped these needs based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to guide us step by step in the Product Development process being sure we fulfill needs without gaps. 

Scope & Constraints

• Refresh and Revive the Distribution Business. Looking for new opportunities in a changing market. Games Distribution and Complementary Solutions. Music, Videos, Games Distribution. Streaming.
• Competitive Audit to Differentiate in the Distribution of Games. 
• Prove to business the value of understanding the users and getting them in product decisions.
• User-Centered Design. Understand the users and Educate the team.
• Integrate Design Processes into Product Development.

Offering a Modern and Trustable solution for Unity between Gameloft, Client, and Users.

As part of Product Team we had to create on one side a customizable solution we were able to easily deliver to our Clients and on the other side be sure the product satisfies the needs of the End User that’s the Mobile Game Player.

/ DEVELOPMENT CHALLANGE

Integrate the Design Process and enable scalability and customization with the Design System Manager. 

Developers quickly understood the Atomic Design System Manager and so we decreased the development time of both new and refined features.

The customization process was streamlined for a big number of clients and we were able to deliver faster at the same high standards.

• Faster time to market for each customization
• Decreased development time
• Fewer development errors

/ USER CHALLENGE

Making informed Design Decisions when creating new features.

When we decided to improve the applications with a gamification feature the user was in the center of attention when we made any decision. Targeting gamification incentives by Gamers' mindsets to motivate them to continue playing and engage with the app and games.

/ USER CHALLENGE

We built gamification stories for each gamer mindset to purposefully please them and encourage playing what they would like. 

Each story card has targeted rewards based on gamers’ mindsets and what motivates them to play.

Gamification journey as simple as possible. Not intrusive but inclusive.

Implementing user goals in the product development process

• User research for demographics and psychographics.
• Identify users' typologies based on personas.
• Observe subscribed/not subscribed users' behavior in the app.
• Identify where users quit or are getting stuck.
• Observe how frequently specific features are used.
• Enhance engagement.
• Optimizing flows
• Increase in conversions.

To properly enhance the experience we will watch the goals of 2 types of users. Subscribed and not subscribed users.

/ BUSINESS CHALLANGE

Improving ROI and making Business understand the value of user-centered design.

Making informed design decisions and offering users an easy to use and intuitive interface we were able to achieve impressive results.

• User Acquisition CSR with increased 20%
• Credit consumption increased with over 100%

Results & takeaways

In over 2 years in Gameloft, I was able to shift perspectives about product development making space for the user in the process. 

• Business and Development understood the value of Good Design and User-Centered Design Decisions. 
• Proved Design Matter with data results.
• Integrated the Design process into Agile development methodology and Developers started asking Design questions. 
• Put in place a Design Process.
• Built and rebuilt Games distributions apps to meet today's standards. 
• Built a team appreciated for our work inside Gameloft Distribution Business. 
• Inspired other departments inside Gameloft to take a better look at their design decisions. 

I'm open to be a Dedicated User Experience Research Partner //

adrian sion / 2023

Bucharest, Romania
Phone: +40 755 883 825
Email: [email protected]