Job Hunt WIP

Overview: Job Hunt is a UI centered strategy RPG centered around a struggling student who battles through the workforce, obtaining corporate skills before facing off against their employers in dialogue-based combat

Role: UX/UI Designer, Game Designer, Asset Artist

Toolkit: Figma, Photoshop, Unity, Miro, Milanote

UX Research

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Background

Our concept started with a loose game sketch, a semi-retro-comedy game poking fun at the job search process that post grads experience. Platform laptop and PC, designed to be both turn based and time sensitive

• time sensitive combat with recharge on actions

• clear communication of battle states (prone, attacking, damaged etc.)
• clear communication of effects and uses of skills

*Since early stage, the idea was to create an interface that compliments a game centered around player strategy, that appeals to both fans of longer term strategy and fast paced combat with immedate rewards

Research Goals

blah blah

Methodologies

1. comparative analysis
2. player motivation/affinity mapping
3. player personas
4. persona scenarios

Comparative Analysis

	AwA	Omori	Fire Emblem
Summary	choice based interactive fiction	narrative turn based RPG	tactical fantasy RPG
Target Audience	young casual mobile players (30 min play)	young fans of narrative indie games	older gameboy players, strategy lovers
Strengths	punchy and consise dialogue, well tutorialized game loop	clear communication of battle states and tools while maintaining campy visual flare	well established and tested precedent for stat management
Weaknesses	no long term decision making or way to view past decisions, ideal for linear play	specifics of synergies are hard to memorize (angry > happy, happy > sad)	unfriendly for beginners lots of visual information all at once

Player Motivation

UI should compliment a game built around mastery and achievement while also blending into the background during faster paced gameplay and narrative elements

Persona #1

Bio

Between working part time, college and job hunting on linkedIn or Hanshake Gemma enjoys casual fun gaming with quick rewards and a relatively low time commitment. Gemma enjoys games like Valorant for its variety of preset character builds colorful flashy gameplay and Hades for its short term decision making and rich story

Player Motivation

• Excitement (Action): Gemma enjoys fast paced, exciting games that have flashy visuals and rapid speed combat.

• Story (Creativity): Gemma picks up games that have unique stories and concepts. She especially loves games that incorporate humorous & nonsensical elements into gameplay.  

Frustrations With Existing Games

• Gemma finds having to grind to progress in games monotonous and time consuming
• Gemma struggles when she’s forced to play with a particular strategy to be able to progress (ex level up grind, poorly balanced abilities, only playing defensively etc)

Needs and Expectations for New Games

• a light hearted playful narrative
• a forgiving grading system allowing for experimentation in strategy

Player Experience Goals

• Gemma should find the strategic elements of the game easy to grasp but should be able to progress narrative without much long term strategizing

• Leveling up should still be visually satisfying to Gemma and goals should feel difficult but within reach

• Narrative should be conveyed through both writing and visuals in a way that doesnt intrude on gameplay

Persona #1 Scenario

Gemma has made it to the first boss battle but she is overwhelmed by the amount of different skills and items available to use. She does feel motivated to plan very far in advance before battles. Gemma might lose a couple times except:

• She might gain XP with each loss, allowing her to brute force a boss
• Other gameplay/bosses might be available even if she’s stuck a section of the map
• No progress is lost by losing a battle, and loss can be worked into the narrative

Persona #2

Bio

After a long day at work Jerome likes to unwind with immersive games where he can experiment with different builds, and optimize for min-max gameplay. Jerome enjoys games like Skyrim for its diverse long term build options and Genshin for its synergy and stat effect interactions.

Player Motivation

• Completion (Achievement): likes to unlock all available abilities to guaruntee a win

• Design (Creativity):
• Strategy (Mastery):

Frustrations With Existing Games

• Jerome dislikes being locked into a specific way of play; static gameplay
• After getting the basics Jerome doesn’t want hints or player guidelines, he prefers to learn through experimentation

Needs and Expectations for New Games

• Character Optimization – being able to craft a powerful “build” with synergies
• Optional collectables for side quests
• Rewards for completing a task perfectly, allowing for speedruns and hitless runs

Player Experience Goals

• Jerome should have ample time to collect and experiment with effects, builds and items
• Jerome is able to quickly grasp how to use abilities
• UI and other flare should make it easier to compare stats rather than overwhelm with visual information

Persona #2 Scenario

When Jerome discovers that he can complete optional tasks to unlock new skills, he does so at every opportunity, though gets a little annoyed at having to repetitively fight in order to gather more skills. As he gains more skills though, he spends time finding what synergizes well together to create an optimized arrangement, making side quests more efficient

• In game ‘test dummy’ to test stat effects & combos that’s integrated into the narrative (mock interview)
• An ‘elemental’ system to make it clear which combinations build on each other and which don’t so he can make informed decisions about where he prioritizes his energy

UX Design

Project Goals

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Features roadmap

After a first draft gameplay design, I realised I had to reduce to just as enough features to demonstrate our concept. In the final version I’ve included basic features such as the Battle Loadout Screen, and Battle screen while continuing to develop our Open World Level Select screen and fleshing out the actions taken during battle with visual responses to indicate change.

Information Architecture

User Flow

We started with two primary flows:
• ability selecting – battle loadout scene
• battle screen
The idea was that the bulk of decision making needs to be made in the battle loadout screen, and that most active gameplay happens in the battle screen

*Ideally we would have explored deeper architecture including earning new skills but given the time constraint and simultaneously developing the game we went with the main two screens.

Overall Game User Flow

Information Flow

Task Flows

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Wireframes

For the first flow, I’ve developed our battle loadout scene, which I’ve divided in two main steps: General loadout and Edit mode under which I added another sketch to show how the General loadout would adapt to a changed selection

UI Design

Going off an initial moodboard we were conflited between the bright blue and clean aesthetics of the Linkedin, Handshake and social media that our game was intended to parody and the low-poly retro style of our models.

Instead we developed two distinct style-guides depending on if the UI was diagetic or virtual in the game world, referenced in an ongoing style guide.

UI Library Components

Certain elements I designed to work work between both interfaces, since the Physical Pallette is usually going to be overlaid over the Digital Pallette like the selected color.

• our high fidelity key screens are still in progress

Usability Tests

Prototype

To get to our first prototype we experimented with layouts in Miro individually followed by a design critique. Eventually we reduced available actions to what we knew would be implemented into gameplay, given all the time-sensitive decision making the player would need to do.

Our interactable prototype was more of a parody of a fighting game which would be easy to understand for our demographics, leaving more visual space for status effects

Outcome

After playtesting with 3 graphic designers and non-designers we got some general feedback:

Iterations

My focus at this phase of feedback was redesigning our healthbar and ultimately changing the grading and synergy system as a result.

After discussion, we wanted to convey the idea that meeting in the middle is good. Like in a real interview coming on too strong or too softly is a no-no.

Friday Night Funkin Healthbar – push your enemy to their side on the left

In this new version doing too much rapid damage to your enemy pulls yourself towards the center, while taking damage pushes you to the left, the idea is for the player to strike a balance between dealing and taking damage and meet your opponent in the middle

Now the ‘danger’ indicators are on each far end, with subtle danger zones that dynamically affect the character icons.

I also designed and added our pause menu to reflect the fact that our gameplay is time sensitive as well as integrate our accessibility settings

Key Takeaways

• challenges
• lessons learned