FOOTBALL EMPIRE
DIGAMORE ENTERTAINMENT

User Experience and User Interface design for mobile game Football Empire

Details.

Digamore Entertainment/ User Experience and Interface Design for the mobile football strategy game Football Empire. iOS and Google Play.

Responsibilities.

Flow charts & information architecture
Creation of Wireframes, mockups and animations
Prototyping (Click Prototypes + Engine Prototypes)
In House and Remote Testing

Duration.

2018
From Production till Launch: 11 Months

Senior User Experience/User Interace Designer.

I worked as a Senior UI/UX Designer for Digamore Entertainment on a football management strategy mobile game called ‘Football Empire’. Being the only UI/UX Designer gave me a lot of responsibility, so I was able to take ownership of the whole development process from initial design to implementation. I worked on features in close collaboration with Game Designers creating wireframes, visualizing ideas, building flow charts and prototypes ready to be handed over to Artists. I created UI Screens and Animations directly in Unity 3D. Besides that, I did a lot of research on other football manager and strategy games, did a lot of analysis on user feedback, collected data from our Performance team. I took ownership for the whole developing process, from initial design to implementation. We used agile methods like scrum, had stand up meetings, I did a lot of planning/estimation with the whole team to define our goals and milestones.

Analysis and Research.

My first task was to investigate the current state of the existing game, especially the user experience, but also how the interface communicates with the player. What followed was a very extensive documentation of areas of the game that can be improved, including solutions. Those problem-solving approaches were then evaluated with the producer and included in the Jira catalogue. Next I investigated and researched which games are successful on the mobile market as a benchmark. In the mobile game sector where Football Empire is located, i.e. Strategy and Football Manager, as well as all kinds of city-building strategy games. I also had a general investigation on successful mobile games and did a detailed research on why these games are successful. What were outstanding specifications and mechanics and did a extensive research report. 

FEATURE CASE: SCOUTING OFFICE

Disclaimer: Some work and processes may not be further elaborated here for NDA legal reasons. The goal here is to give you a first impression of my work and working methods. With permission of Digamore Entertainment GmbH. For further information, please contact me. All works are the intellectual property of Online Fussball Manager and Digamore Entertainment.

Brief.

The function of the scouting office is to give players the opportunity to sign new football players. These players will be re-deployed after a certain time interval. This provides an interesting return mechanism to bring players back into the game and see if there are any new interesting players available. You can also unlock more player slots by expanding the Scouting Office building (raising the level). One of the possibilities is to "bring back" the scout earlier - time reduction mechanics - to get the new distribution of new players. This is done against real currency.

Wireframe and Prototyping.

After gameplay and UX design defined the vision and concept of the scouting office, I quickly created wireframes about the design and player flow. Here the focus was on rapid wireframing to quickly evaluate the player experience through internal testing and present it to the whole team. To be able to test the feature quickly with players, I created an interactive prototype using Proto.io. This enabled us to test this UX Flow on different mobile and tablet devices.

Testing.

At Digamore, we did a lot of in house testing and we had our own Quality Assurance team testing the current builds. For the in-house testing, we invited testers to the office and gave them a mobile device that was specially prepared for this testing session.
The session was filmed in agreement with the tester and his game session was projected on a monitor. These testing sessions were defined in advance through user testing scenarios. We defined which features we wanted to test and which player insights we wanted to have. In this regard we have created a list of questions that the players should answer. On the other hand we also did some remote testing. This allowed testers to test in their own familiar environment. For these, test accounts we created and after a certain time interval we sent out surveys and in the early access phase we implemented a feedback button in the game HUD. This gave all players a quick and easy way to give us feedback. All data was evaluated by the performance team together with me.

Testing and Meeting room at Digamore Entertainment

FINAL WORK:

FEATURE CASE: SHOP SYSTEM

Brief.

The goal was to create a shop system in which players could find their way around quickly and easily. We followed conventions so that the purchase and payment process was as simple and familiar as possible. For this purpose, I did research in advance, which games have a good shop system and what are the advantages. We decided on a grid framework to give the player the possibility to compare the different price packages and to get an overview of all offers. But my work went beyond the shop system and I defined user experience flows, which is part of the shop experience. For example, when should the player be guided to the shop and when should offer pop-ups appear. How should this Pop Up be designed? What are important elements to communicate to the player - visual hierarchy. How do we make a fair cash economy possible.

Wireframe and Prototyping.

After gameplay and UX design defined the framework and concept of the shop system, I quickly created wireframes about the framework and player flow. Here the focus was on rapid wireframing to quickly evaluate the player experience through internal testing and present it to the whole team. To be able to test the feature quickly with players, I created an interactive prototype using Proto.io. This enabled us to test this UX Flow on different mobile and tablet devices.

FINAL GAME

YOUR TEAM. YOUR CLUB. YOUR EMPIRE.

Have you always wanted to start your own football club and lead it toward success?

Install Football Empire for free and launch your career as a football manager! Develop your success strategy and create your empire out of nothing.

Experience the fascination of football

Make strategic decisions and construct new buildings on your club grounds. Manage the training and the recreation of your players on their path to world stardom. Launch your managerial career today and let us show you how to lead your team to success!

Launch your managerial career today

Let us show you how you can train your players and improve them. Find out what it means to be a football manager each day.

Create your own Football Empire!

Manage training sessions, recreation, tactics, lineups and your club grounds.
Watch as your heroes from the pitch become international stars.
Be proud of your team and club grounds — your Football Empire.