CLIENT

GGLeagues is a recreational eSports league for college and high school players of League of Legends or Dota 2 since summer 2018. Each season, they provide weekly online matches with an in-person championship finals.

THE GOAL & CHALLENGE

Erich Bao, the CEO, expressed the need to re-design the whole platform. He asked us to think of ways of how we can make the player experience more enjoyable, engaging, and community-oriented. Based on our short timeline, we needed to determine the exact project scope based on findings drawn from our domain/user research.

Ultimately, the main goal is to re-design the main pages of this eSports league platform to gain new users, increase user retention, and improve the overall user experience of the website — An easy navigational platform that foster community, provide essential information, and encourage friendly competition.

THE APPROACH

RESEARCH

To start off our research in the eSports industry, we decided that the first step is to be in the shoes of the users. Since none of us were familiar about eSports and did not play League of Legends or DOTA 2, we really needed to get ourselves familiar with the gaming world. We wanted to get first-hand experience by immersing ourselves in the games provided by GGLeagues as part of our ethnographic research to better understand the culture and the games.

We researched more about the competitive eSports industry, gaming, and leagues in general. We needed to learn and assess where GGLeagues is positioned in recreational, collegiate eSports to narrow the scope of the project, identify the problem, and start designing solutions to the problem.

Through our domain research, I learned that there is much more to gaming than just playing them. It’s a billion dollar industry that’s growing where professional gamers are making millions by winning tournaments, stream game play, sign with teams from companies like Samsung, sell merchandise, and more. Students are even able to receive college scholarships through gaming.

To get further insights, we did a competitive analysis of major competitors including Collegiate Starleague and Super League Gaming. We analyzed what those competitors did well, what they lacked in, what some provided while others did not. A surprising fact is that many leagues did not offer a balanced recreational eSports league for students in their local area. This truly differentiates GGLeagues from the rest. Many of them are only available online and barely have a sense of community and are mainly available to competitive players.

After thorough research and synthesizing, we were able to identify three key insights:

CURRENT WEBSITE

USER RESEARCH

After many rounds of interviewing/testing, my team found out that users wanted to see their progress as an individual and team player, but also for GGLeagues to be a comfortable space that promotes friendly competition and connectivity.

The following are key takeaways from our users: 

We further interviewed industry experts to gain more insights in the eSports world which further confirmed both the user goals and GGLeagues goals. 

• It is important for both players and coaches to track growth and progress within teams to scout opponents and recruit players

• In-person events and friendly competition are favored because they help create a sense of community and increase engagement

DEFINING THE PROBLEM

PROBLEM STATEMENT

With our research, we were able to synthesize and identify the problem:

Enthusiastic eSports players need a digital way to stay connected with gaming and league information and content in order to enjoy being a part of an active and cohesive community of gamers, beyond just being competitors.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Then we identified key design principles:   

IDEATION

With this in mind, we finally formed two concepts that address user needs in different ways:

PERFORMANCE-FOCUSED

The first concept focuses on the user’s performance as a player. We added and modified all of the content and formatting of the main pages that many users expressed change for.

For the full clickable low-fidelity prototype, click here.

Connection-focused

The second concept is focused on helping users form personal connections and is a way for users to come together as friends through the GGLeagues website. This concept includes a more simple and visual approach with a welcoming feel.

For the all of the low-fidelity wireframes, click here.

TAKEAWAY

After testing, we confirmed that community/connection and performance-based content were both components that GGLeagues users valued. However, players mentioned that even though they wish more of community presence, it cannot be at the expense of important information including statistics, schedules, and news. League content is first, community is second. 

And so we looked at both concepts and made a hybrid version by choosing the best aspects of the two to address the problem. We wanted to prioritize the Performance Concept to focus on team and player performance while also borrowing themes from the second concept such as highlighting streams and player rewards or recognition. We believed that this combination would most effectively increase the usability of the site, retain existing users, and enhance the community aspect.

FINAL DESIGN

With our research findings we created a prototype that has a combination of the two concepts.

For the full clickable hi-fidelity prototype, click here.

Dashboard

Player ProfilE

DISCUSSION BOARD

Through our usability testing, we received positive feedback about the simplified formatting for easy navigation and needed information added to track their own progress or to scout others. They also loved the community section inserted in the Dashboard to see that this is more than just about leagues. Users rated the prototype with an average ease of use rating of 4.1 out of 5 and an average satisfaction rating of 4.4 out of 5.

By integrating more information users are interested in, they now have a reason to not only visit, but keep coming back to the GGLeagues website and turn that into an integral part of their eSports routine. It was a challenge to find the right balance in addressing both the client goals and the user needs but we were able to create a prototype that solves both worlds: improve user retention while maintaining the same fun and friendly gaming environment that users were drawn to in the first place. 

NEXT STEPS

RECOMMENDATIONS

In our project journey, we narrowed down and identified the main goals to increase GGLeagues’ user base, retain current users and improve the overall user experience of their site. We conducted some research and interviewed current users, learning that their goals are not far off from GGLeagues’. They wanted to make progress as a team and stay connected to this community that allows for friendly competition. To further improve what we have worked on, we gave some recommendations for next steps: 

• REVISE THE DISCUSSION BOARD

  Gamers use Discord as their prime communication but having an effective chat feature within the site would provide users a direct, quick method to ask questions, voice concerns, and socialize. Testing different kinds of chats, formatting, and placement is needed. 

  
  

• SET GUIDELINES FOR THE BADGE SYSTEM

  The Badge System concept was a great success in that everyone loved how players and teams could be rewarded not only for their skills but also for their great sportsmanship. The specifics need to be solidified in order to put this into action. 

  
  

• INSERT CONTENT FOR POST-MATCH REVIEW

  The Post-Match Review pop-up modal supported the theory that users would be more inclined to revisit the site. Receiving feedback from users on which information is prioritized would help increase user retention.

MOVING FORWARD

Design can always be iterated and improved upon. Because of the great success of our project, we were grateful to have the opportunity to keep moving forward with GGLeagues to create an even better product. The project was extended for another 10 weeks for us to address the recommendations we have made and also include a new marketing landing page for GGLeagues to gain new users. We also started to add UI elements to the main pages.