🎮 Project 01

Epic Games Store community engagement

Role
Product Design, UX, UI
Team
Epic Games
TYpe
Full time employment
Time
March - August 2021

Tools, Methods, & Team

Tools

Figma
FigJam

Methods

Competitive analysis
User journey map
Personas
Design workshops
Wireframing
Prototyping

Team

Developer Experience
Support-A-Creator

30 second pitch

Influencers have a huge impact on players’ decisions to buy a game. How might the Epic Games Store connect their player community to influencers?

Create a new “Community Tab” in the Epic Games Store, and introduce loyalty incentives for game players to feel connected with their favorite influencers.

Community tab interface sample.

Profile page community tab interface sample.

Designing the ‘hub’ for gaming Influencers

Table of Contents

Context
Research
UX Workshops
Ideation
Prototype
Reflection

Context

Influencers and SAC matter to Epic Games

Influencers HIGHLY impact game sales, and the SAC program brings in their partnerships with Epic Games.

Influencers bring in Players (gamers) to Epic Games Store by sharing video, art, and other media content with their fans.

Players are the users of the Epic Games Store, and buys games on this website.

And this is good for Epic Games. Influencers bring in Players, and their purchases increase revenue for game developers and Epic Games.

In turn, the SAC program by Epic Games is great for Influencers, because they get to earn part of the game’s revenue.

Players feel disconnected with their favorite Influencers in Epic Games...

...and there is also HUGE opportunity to increase Influencer-based sales....

...and there is room for better UX.

Research

Epic's UX compared to its main competitor, Steam

Steam provided a space for Influencers in their platform, which Epic Games Store didn't have.

Research findings

I dove into both Steam and Epic Games’ ecosystems to see how they differed in integrating influencers into the Player’s game purchasing experiences.

Epic Games had no discovery points for Players to find Influencers.

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The touchpoint with the highest opportunity is in the Player’s experience, as marked with the red cricle. In the current design, Players must navigate out of Epic’s ecosystem for Influencer content because there was no space for them.

General flow of Epic Games Support-A-Creator (2021).

A scorecard of the UX of influencer programs across Steam and Epic Games.

A scorecard of Player UX across Steam and Epic Games.

UX Workshops

Envisioning with stakeholders

The ideal SAC would have high touchpoints for Players to connect and follow Influencers.

3 UX visioning workshops

3 Multidisciplinary teams

Cross-functional visioning workshops

I conducted and prepared materials for three internal workshops with subject matter experts. This encouraged stakeholder discussions to formulate future visoins of the new SAC experience.
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Stakeholderes such as product managers, developers, influencer relations, operations, and designers, modeled an ideal SAC. Many of the participants were in close communication with Influencers and Players. They brought expertise about the end users into forming a vision.

Workshop artifact of a customer journey map for Player UX.

A scorecard of the UX of influencer programs across Steam and Epic Games.

A scorecard of Player UX across Steam and Epic Games.

Affinity diagram of key insights from internal workshops with subject matter experts.

Ideation

Modeling an ideal UX for SAC

Embedding touchpoints at every step of the way can increase the visibility and impact of Influencers on Epic Games, while not overwhelming the Players.

Top 3 insights to improve Player UX

Three design insights surfaced from conducting an affinity analysis of the workshops. The following focuses on the experiences of game Players.

🤝️ Community Building

A large identified opportunity was to integrate touchpoints for Players and  Influencers to build communities together.

🏅 Loyalty Incentives

Experts and stakeholders expressed strong interest in loyalty incentives for Players to be rewarded for supporting Influencers.

📣 ‘Repping’ Influencers

Players can show off their favorite Influencers by ‘repping’ them on their profile pages.

An ideal state journey map for Players

I created an ideal state journey map of Players based on workshop findings. The new journey incorporates Influencer content for Influencer-Player relationship building, Influencer loyalty badges for Players to earn, and show off the badges on the Player’s profile page in the Epic ecosystem to ‘rep’ their favorite Influencers.

This will help Players feel more connected with their favorite Influencers, actively engage with Influencer content, and find new games.

Proposed ideal state customer journey map of the Player in SAC, introducing Influencer community pages and loyalty incentives.

Prototype

Presenting the community ‘hub’

Players and Influencers alike can connect and hype their favorite games in a ‘hub’ called the ‘Community’ tab.

My goal was to lay down foundations to continue work in the future. I prototyped the service designed in the customer journey map.

The following images will show wireframes of what the Community Tab might look like on the Epic Games Store, as well as profile pages of the Player and their friend. These wireframes were presented to stakeholders for further design discussion.

Community tab would be accessed via the game details page

I envisioned this design to be fitting under the current game details  page. This is because users often directly search their game of interest. Adding a ‘Community’ tab can help users feel more confident in their purchase, and boost delight as they see many others in the gaming community engage with this game.

Epic Games Store page of Fall Guys.

🤝️ Community Building

Each product’s Community tab showcases Influencer content for a particular game.

Players find Influencer and community created content here to inform their game purchasing decisions.

Wireframe of a game-specific Community Tab in the Epic Games Store.

🏅 Loyalty Incentives

Players can show off badges earned through supporting the Player’s favorite Influencers.

Wireframe of a Community Tab within the profile of a Player.

📣 ‘Repping’ Influencers

Players can check out their friends’ achievements and Influencer badges. This helps create visibility to Influencer-supporting communities, and space to express their interests.

Wireframe of a Community Tab within the profile of a Player’s friend.

Reflection

Learning how to scaffold conversations across cross-functional teams

Through this experience at Epic Games, I was thrilled to work on a project that could involve industry stakeholders. With the support of my team, I was able to kickstart a series of workshops to talk about drastic improvements to the Support-A-Creator program.

The cross-communication I did with various teams was the meat and potatoes of creating these workshops. I hope to bring the methods I used to visually scaffold conversations into my next step as a Product Designer.

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