Blizzard 2022
Expediting game launch at Blizzard
With Blizzard’s growing game catalog and recent Microsoft acquisition, faster platform integration became crucial. I streamlined title releases to avoid reinventing the wheel each time.
I led the design of Blizzard’s Developer Platform, enabling game teams to collaborate more effectively and significantly reduce the time to launch new games—from 9 months to just 3 months.
ROLE
Product Designer
TEAM
1 x Designer
1 x Product Manager
4 x Engineers
AREA
Strategy
Research
Design - UX & UI
USERS
12+ Game Producers across game teams at Activision and Blizzard
The Context and Ask
Blizzard's platform team creates tools and services for game development, distribution, multiplayer features, anti-piracy measures, and more. The problems at hand:
Onboarding new games to the Battle.net Platform is extremely slow (approx. 9 months)
Integration is manual, and reliant on constant communication with platform teams
Lack of self-service and documentation in case of issues
All the above issues result in prolonged launch times. Hence, implementing a self-service system to enhance cross-collaboration across Activision-Blizzard studios became imperative.
Solution: A centralized hub for all game team needs
The Developer Platform aims to streamline this process, acting as a centralized hub for developers to seamlessly utilize tools, manage titles and access developer documentation.
Developer Platform in Action
Where do I start?
Using design thinking in ambiguity
This project was initiated two years before I joined, The most recent designer had left the team and I was tasked with coming up with a quick and scrappy product and identifying milestones. I put on my design thinking hat and dived into the project with an open mind.
Design Process
Core Users and Needs
I began my research by identifying key stakeholders and conducting interviews to understand their needs and workflows. My focus was on two primary user roles who would be the core users of the platform:
Game Producers: Acting as project managers for new game titles, they oversee the teams and are responsible for managing the entire game delivery lifecycle.
Game Developers: Tasked with integrating platform services into the games, they play a critical role in ensuring the technical implementation aligns with the platform’s capabilities.
These insights shaped the foundation for designing a platform tailored to their unique requirements and challenges.
Customer Needs
After clarifying the core user needs, I began sketching initial ideas on paper to explore and visualize what this new platform experience could look like.
Onboard new Titles
Onboarding new game teams on the Platform
I collaborated with multiple teams and stakeholders at Battle.net to gather insights on the current requirements for setting up a new game. Using this information, I sketched an early version of the portal to outline an onboarding flow tailored for Game Producers. I then shared these initial concepts with stakeholders to identify unique challenges and refine the approach.
Early sketches to explore onboarding
Reducing the onboarding friction
Since the platform was for internal studios first, an extra registration step was redundant. All the studio teams needed was a Title Code to establish a title on the platform, and if they didn't have the code they could request one from the platform teams at Blizzard by using their work emails.
This insight led me to simplify the onboarding process and thereby reducing the friction to entry.
Self Service Experience for Game Producers
After completing onboarding, the teams needed to begin their title integration process. Unlike the current system, where they had to locate and coordinate with individuals at Battle.net to get it done, the new platform should enable them to perform basic integration steps through self-service.
Key Design Decisions
I proposed the concept of an organizational console dedicated to housing all self-service functionalities.
This console would centralize all services needed for game launch, user management tasks, integration progress monitoring, and developer services for the game teams.
The new user journey of a Game Producer
The Console
The Console is a centralized platform for game teams across Activision Blizzard to create, manage, and launch their game titles on the Blizzard platform. Whether internal teams or external collaborators, the Console provides a seamless experience for managing game titles from creation to launch.
Key Design Decisions
Support for Multiple Organizations
Since game teams could be internal or external, the Console needed to accommodate various organizations.
The first step was creating a dedicated space for producers to set up their organization if it didn’t already exist.
Game Title Creation Workflow
Producers were given the ability to create and manage their game titles.
Titles were registered in the system using a unique title code. If a team didn’t have one, they could easily request one via the platform.
Flexible Title Metadata
Producers could add a description and an alias for their game titles to prepare for launch day. This flexibility allowed teams to iterate and finalize details closer to the release.
Visibility and Tracking
A clear and intuitive interface allowed users to view all their titles and monitor their statuses, ensuring full transparency throughout the lifecycle of a game.
These decisions were guided by the need for flexibility, scalability, and user-centric design, ensuring that game teams could efficiently manage their titles regardless of their size or structure.
Console early sketches
Manage Title Settings
Once a title is set up on the platform, game producers require an efficient and intuitive way to manage title settings. The Title Settings Console functions as a centralized CMS, housing all game-related information such as:
Basic Title Information and Meta Data
Device and platform support
Language localization
Legal and regional settings
Age restrictions
Ratings and licenses management
To create a seamless experience, I broke down the design process into a structured sequence of steps, informed by extensive data and user research, hence ensuring the redesigned system streamlined workflows and addressed key challenges in managing title settings effectively.
What are the core needs of Game Producers?
Currently, producers rely on the platform teams who use a title management system to setup the changes. I performed 7 contextual interviews with stakeholders, and game producers to understand their needs and workflows and identified the following core user needs
Game Producers' Title management needs
What's currently making it slow?
The current Title Settings application is an internal tool where internal managers update settings based on requests from game producers. It lacks self-service capabilities, making it cumbersome for producers to efficiently manage title settings. This process introduces significant challenges, particularly in terms of usability and efficiency.
To gain a deeper understanding of these issues, I conducted observation sessions with 5 internal managers to evaluate how they interact with the existing system. These sessions uncovered several experience problems that informed my redesign approach.
High-Level Insights
Lack of Guided Actions: The current system displays information but fails to provide clear next steps or actionable items, leaving producers unsure of what to do next.
Poor Navigation and Visibility: Key settings are buried under multiple table views and complex navigation paths, making it difficult to locate or access necessary information.
Limited Editing Capabilities: The application offers only basic text editing with no smart support, such as showing missing settings or providing error feedback when required fields are incomplete.
Unstructured Information Architecture: The sidebar menu is poorly organized, leading to confusion and inefficiency when navigating between different sections
These insights highlighted the need for a self-service, user-friendly platform that empowers producers to manage their settings efficiently without relying on developer intervention. The redesign focused on addressing these pain points by introducing intuitive workflows, structured navigation, and robust editing support.
Mapping Pain Points and Opportunities
A Unified Title Settings Management Experience
I began ideating the new Title Settings experience with a focus on addressing the existing pain points and creating a more intuitive and efficient workflow for game producers.
Key Design Decisions
Integrate with Platform: To provide self service for producers, I added a workflow to integrate the settings in the new Platform.
Simplified Information Architecture: Reorganized the left sidebar to streamline the system architecture, making it easier to locate and navigate between settings.
Enhanced Navigation Structure: Introduced a secondary level of navigation within each settings page, providing better organization and quick access to related options.
Improved Action Affordances: Designed clearer affordances for key actions like edit and save, ensuring producers can easily execute their tasks without confusion.
Smart Editing Support: Incorporated robust error handling and system-level warnings, offering better support for editing while preventing common mistakes.
Optimized User Experience: Focused on creating a cohesive and intuitive interface to simplify workflows and reduce friction for users.
These design decisions were driven by user research and aimed at delivering a more structured, user-friendly, and productive platform for managing title settings.
Early ideas of the New Title Settings Manager
User flow for Game Producers
Discover Services
The game producer’s journey involves managing the entire lifecycle of a game, from initial setup to post-launch monitoring. Each phase requires different tools and services to ensure the game’s success at every stage.
The game lifecycle typically includes these key stages:
Setup: This is the foundation stage where producers configure essential settings and prepare the game for integration with platform services.
Build: During this phase, producers integrate core features such as gameplay mechanics, platform tools, and APIs.
Monetize: Producers implement monetization features like in-game purchases, subscription models, and rewards systems.
Measure & Monitor: Analytics tools are crucial here to track player behavior, retention rates, and other performance metrics to gauge the game’s success. After launch, continuous monitoring ensures the game performs smoothly. Producers track issues, update content, and manage player feedback.
Producers need to leverage these tools to avoid reinventing the wheel for each new game, ensuring smoother integration, improved game quality, and optimized player experiences from launch through to long-term maintenance.
Integrate Services in the Platform
To facilitate service discovery within the new platform, I developed a workflow that allows users to explore available tools access related documentation.
I consolidated all the tool information into a centralized “Tools Repository” page, where users can easily find and access the tools, with direct links to documentation and support channels. This page was intentionally made public to enhance visibility and showcase all available tools to a broader audience, improving discoverability and accessibility.
User flow for Finding Services and Documentations
Services Repository
Next, I began ideating the design for the Services page, with the following key design decisions:
Marketplace-Style Layout: To effectively showcase both current and upcoming tools, I designed the page to resemble a marketplace, allowing users to easily browse available tools.
Detailed Tool Information: Each tool includes key details such as its name, description, and type to help users quickly understand its functionality.
Lifecycle Tagging: Tools are tagged based on the game lifecycle stages they support (e.g., setup, build, monetize), making it easier for producers to discover the right tools at the right time.
Integration Support: For each tool, I added clear access to support channels, including Slack channels, email, and direct contacts, to streamline the process of asking integration-related questions.
These design decisions were aimed at improving usability, discoverability, and support for producers navigating the tool ecosystem on the platform.
Early concept of wayfinding tools
Documentation for Developers
Finally, to enable seamless integration of these services, the next step is to provide comprehensive documentation for developers. This includes clear guides, API references, and detailed instructions to support developers in easily incorporating tools into their games.
Design Decisions:
Integrated within the Platform: The documentation is accessible directly from the console via a prominent “Docs” button, ensuring it’s always within reach.
Organized by Game Lifecycle: Documentation is structured around the same game lifecycle stages (setup, build, monetize, measure, monitor) for easy navigation.
Quick Support Links: Each tool includes direct links to support channels, such as Slack or email, to assist developers with integration questions or issues.
Early sketch of documentation
Test, Learn, Iterate.
To gather feedback from as many producers as possible during the early testing phase, I created a survey using Qualtrics, detailing our prototype and its features. The survey included non-leading questions to assess whether each feature was intuitive, if users could easily identify next steps, and other aspects of the user experience. These questions were specifically designed to validate the initial hypotheses generated from our research.
Key Areas of Focus:
• UI Improvements: Identifying top UI enhancements to help users navigate the app more efficiently.
• Platform Navigation: Testing the effectiveness of the newly consolidated navigation of settings, tools, documentation etc. to ensure it aligns with user expectations.
• First Impressions: Gathering feedback from new users (specifically third-party studios) to understand their initial impressions of the app and how intuitive the interface is for newcomers.
This testing phase was crucial for refining the design and ensuring the platform was user-friendly and met the needs of all stakeholders.
Results from the Testing
Neatify with Visual Design
The final step involved designing the user interface using the UI kit I developed, which was based on Blizzard’s existing website design system. To ensure a cohesive and functional design, I adhered to several key UI design principles:
Lifecycle Color Coding: I color-coded the different game lifecycle phases to make it easier for producers to navigate and identify key stages at a glance.
Consistent with Blizzard's design system: The interface was built using a consistent set of UI components and patterns imitated from Blizzard apps design system, ensuring a unified and familiar experience for users.
