Stacks

UX for a video game playlist app

Create, curate, and share playlists in this native mobile app designed to help gamers decide what next to play.

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The Problem

Being a gamer means getting constantly bombarded with recommendations, but keeping track of every must-play title is tough. The acceleration of digital distribution and subscription services concurrent with the rise of mobile gaming has led to an oversaturated market, which makes deciding what to play next a lot harder than it should be.

Hence, the opportunity to apply playlist functionality to video games, empowering gamers to track their must-play titles using custom playlists that can be shared.

Assessing the competitive landscape

Research focused on 13 apps with some form of content curation functionality involving music, film/television, and games. Non-gaming media apps provide essential reference, as the experience and associated interface of creating and sharing music and movie playlists has been thoroughly explored, executed, and refined. IGN Playlist, Stash, and Playlist apps are standouts for solid execution.

Nevertheless, there are noted gaps in the experiences that limit the utility of playlists or simply make the process of curating them more work than it should be. The feature matrix above is useful for identifying gaps in competitor offerings, as is the case with direct messaging and playlist functionality which appear in less than half of the apps examined.

One-sheets breakdown each of the 13 apps, remarking on strengths and weaknesses in both experience and interface design. Collecting screenshots is particularly important as they later serve as reference when building UI elements.

Understanding Users

Personas were crafted to get a sense of what users need and their motivations for using Stacks. From this exploration, it was possible to propose a list of features.

Feature Mapping

The challenge in providing a litany of features is to merge them in the most elegant, simplest design possible. Aiding this endeavor are feature flows, which articulate the ideal functional path through a particular aspect of the app. From these flows the app's core structure can be determined in the form of a site map.

Wireframes

My work on the app concluded with delivery of structural wireframes, which is all about organizing screen space. Affordances for graphic elements like profile photo and game art are set in place, as are interface components.