Ludo App & Website

Preliminary Research

The concept originated from frustrations shared by myself and friends, sparking a question of whether others also wanted a comprehensive gaming database that includes every game ever published regardless of platform.

In summary of the findings, users do share this frustration and are often led to websites that have the database they’re looking for but fail to deliver in-depth filters, have unappealing UI, and most likely won’t use it again.

Because user frustrations depended largely on existing products or the absence of them, conducting competitive analysis and user interviews became the imperative next steps.

Competitive Analysis

Steam’s position as a powerhouse storefront makes it integral to competitive analysis, both for understanding industry standards and evaluating Steam’s own strengths and limitations. Moving forward, I conducted audits for the following products:

Steam

IGDB

Itch.io

Backloggd

MobyGames

User Interviews

5 participants were interviewed one-on-one with a focus on the gaming ecosystem as a whole and how existing platforms shape their behaviors and pain points. Compiling the interviews, I created an affinity map, and synthesized the data into 5 categories:

• Underrepresented Games
• Storefront Improvements
• Disconnect Across Platforms
• External Source
• "Wild Goose Chase"

Empathy Maps

Taking the categorized affinity maps, I created two aggregated empathy maps representing two types of users:

• Data-Driven Explorer
• Discovery-Focused Gamer

User Personas

Finally, I synthesized the empathy maps into two user personas to guide and understand who I am designing for.

The Information Architecture

Creating a sitemap helped envision the navigation sequence a user would experience in order to reach their goals. This helped with organizing the traffic between the starting point and the end goal, which meant having to get rid of unnecessary pages or rethinking the layout.

User Flow

Given Ludo’s complex open-ended format, picking a prominent user flow was more realistic than outlining the entire app’s flow. The prominent flow in this case was to “find a game.”

Paper Wireframes

I began visualizing pen on paper designs and sketches to regurgitate as many ideas as possible efficiently. To not lose focus on the objective, I referenced the information architecture to guide design decisions and “doodle with a purpose.”

Style Guide

View The Final Prototype

Mobile App

Figma Prototype

Desktop/Website

Figma Prototype

Takeaways

Ludo represents the enthusiasm that I, and many others, have for video games. It was a project that became increasingly more ambitious and complex, but the journey was undeniably enjoyable. Every iteration was a direct improvement from before, which was backed by user feedback. The two critical points were the most challenging to address especially considering time and budget constraints.

I learned that your target users will give the greatest insight on why someone would use my product over a competitor’s product. Even if a base idea is solid, it needs to be met with user-centric solutions, and I am excited to bring this mindset to future projects.