• VR Card Game

VR Card Game

(under NDA)

Our goal for this project was to address User Experience challenges in the Virtual Reality space. Our MVP was to define an intuitive interface that works well across all platforms and provides a fun social experience.

My Responsibilities were:
- Defining the input schemes, theme and overall experience
- Iterative physical and low-fidelity prototyping and User Testing
- Programming interactions for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift DK2
- Documenting the UX process and future scope




Information and game content has been excluded to honour our NDA with Roadhouse Interactive.

  • Client

    Roadhouse Interactive

  • Roles

    UX Designer
    Programmer

  • Duration

    13 weeks

  • Team Size

    5 members

Challenge

To develop a Virtual Reality game application that proves a synchronous multiplayer experience across several VR Platforms and input types including HTC Vive, Oculus Rift DK2 and Samung Gear VR.

Approach

Our approach was to prototype and user-test different interaction schemes for the different input types. We did this iteratively to save programming cost and identify problem areas sooner than later.

Virtual reality poses major challenges for designing an intuitive interface. We maintained our focus to find a balance between designing realistic interactions and using a virtual to the maximum potential.

Process Summary
  • 01 Brainstorming and Research

    We started by doing a competitive SWOT analysis of our competitors (existing similar game and VR experiences). This helped us narrow down on potential features.
    We then brainstormed themes and ideas to create a fantastical experience.

  • 02 Prototyping and User Testing

    We performed iterative physical and low-fidelity digital prototyping and user-testing.
    This allowed us to quickly user-test these interaction ideas and refine them with minimum cost and effort.

  • 02 Implementation and Iteration

    After proofing our ideas physically, we implemented our refined ideas technically and repeated user-testing cycles.
    We iterated our designs according to feedback and repeated the whole cycle of implementation as a design iteration.

UX Design Process

Personas

After our competitive SWOT analysis, we created personas of the potential users of our VR application. We tried to incorporate the spectrum of people ranging from people interested only in the physical game with no knowledge of VR and vice-versa. This helped us make design considerations keeping these users and their agencies in mind and consequently develop user stories for them.

User Stories

We created a number of user stories from our personas and requirements. We then categorized them by placing them in a matrix of size (small, medium and large) vs priority (must have, nice to have and could have). We did this to prioritize our user stories and plan our corresponding tasks efficiently.

User Flows

We then created flowcharts for each interaction within the experience including logic, feedback, user inputs and game decision points. This helped us account for scenarios we hadn't thought through before.




Protoyping & Usertesting

We created physical prototypes for Oculus and HTC Vive controllers to test our input schemes. For Gaze, we attached a laser to a plastic frame we made and for Vive, we attached magnets to paper controllers. This allowed us to quickly user-test these interaction ideas and refine them with minimum cost and effort.