Case Study
I led the design for a social gaming content creation platform by collecting user feedback, designing new features and validating them with user testing.
Playerstate enabled video game developers to increase engagement with their players with challenge and community tools.
Through user feedback and interviews we identified what the platform was doing well and what it needed to improve on.
Once the users problems were identified, solutions were designed and prototyped in Figma.
User testing sessions were ran on each new feature to validate our solutions to the initial problem.
From 2021 to 2023, Playerstate was a prominent startup within Activate Studios' portfolio. Throughout this period, it hosted hundreds of challenges, engaging thousands of users and fostering deeper connections between video game creators and their players. The platform's innovative approach allowed game developers to issue a variety of challenges, ranging from fan art submissions and in-game clips to audio challenges, among others. This strategy not only provided game creators with valuable content for promoting their games and boosting community engagement but also enabled them to reward their community members with prizes for winning challenges.
The start of my work as lead product designer on Playerstate coincided with the beta launch of its MVP. I was responsible for the entire design process from this point including collecting user feedback, designing solutions and then validating them through user testing. Towards the end of my time working on Playerstate I also led another designer as part of the team.
The main challenge I faced working at Playerstate was to increase the engagement in challenges and social interaction on the platform. This was important for the growth of the platform to continue attracting more game creators to choose Playerstate to host challenges.
I tackled this in the following ways:
These solutions led to a large increase in the number of submissions on the platform and a much larger active community.
The MVP of Playerstate was desktop only so one of my early tasks was creating a mobile version for the whole platform
The improved explore page brought challenges, communities and submissions to the forefront and created the possibility for promoted events.
The MVP of Playerstate had no search functionality so I designed and validated a solution which allowed users to find specific content faster.
The improved challenge page provided a more visual way of presenting a challenge with a large gallery section for inspiration and a large section featuring the challenge rewards.
The improved challenge submission flow gave users a quicker and more visual way of submitting their creations.
The improved submission modal utilised the entire screen to show the submission in its best light alongside the interaction from other users.
Valon Statovci
Co-founder of Playerstate
Working with Jack was a pleasure. He had a clear focus on ensuring the design process was effective and well structured. He had a clear understanding of our vision and helped bring it to life in fantastic UI.
He was always keen to continously improve our product and processes and was a key member of the team!
Would highly recommend.
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