“VICTORY AWAITS”

World of Tanks (Playstation 4/5 & Xbox 1 / Series X) is a longstanding MMO vehicle combat title that I worked on as lead UX designer at Wargaming Studios. As a games as a service title, WoT has undergone many evolutions since it originally launched in 2014. During my time at Wargaming, many of the game’s core systems were being redesigned for a late 2020 launch. Part of my responsibilities were to create a complete refresh of the UI and UX scheme of the game to help modernize, optimize, and improve usability in support of these new systems.

PLAYERS

The World of Tanks community is an extremely loyal and vocal community that had many expectations of us as we developed this latest iteration of the game. Given the number of new and redesigned features being introduced to the game, it was imperative that we implemented a user experience that not only maintained the playerbase’s mental models for the game, but also provided avenues that allowed them to seamlessly onboard to the new content.

WORK

• Develop and maintain key deliverables that defined the new UX strategy

• Develop a new, modern style guide for the UI in collaboration w/ the art team

• Manage and guide the UI/UX team including artists, designers, and engineers

• Produce and translate user research into actionable UX goals

• Create fully interactive UI prototypes demonstrating user, business, and design goals

• Assist in the art direction and visual design of this iteration of the game

• Implement key UX and UI deliverables in engine

TIMEFRAME

2020 - 2020

TOOLS

• Axure

• Adobe XD

• Adobe Photoshop

• Adobe Illustrator

THE PROCESS

My work on World of Tanks focused largely on a massive refresh of the longstanding game. Many of the core systems were being completely overhauled, and entire systems that were largely UI based were being introduced. This list of features includes, but is not limited to, a new profile system, an updated store, updated inventory systems, seasonal content, improved social features, and many others. Gameplay mechanics were also being altered which also required completed updated in-game UI such as the HUD.

One of the first steps in this redesign process was conducting several rounds of playtesting with our audience at our external UX research partner, Full Sail University. I worked closely with our research team, putting together the test plan and flying down to Florida in order to help moderate testing. The early tests were designed to assess how players felt about new mechanics and gameplay systems, as well as identify areas in which UI improvements were necessary prior to launch.

As this refresh required new UI for nearly every screen and system in the game, for the purposes of this portfolio piece, I will focus on my work in the development of the season pass feature, as this was brand new for World of Tanks. This feature went through several rounds of iteration, and was a truly cross discipline addition that required close collaboration between myself as a key stakeholder, engineering, live operations, art, and publishing.

Initial concepts for the battle pass were largely limited by technical constraints of our UI framework and engine. The initial pass of the season pass was implemented for one short season, and laid the groundwork for future UI/UX enhancements. The initial shortened season also allowed us to collect data on player behavior through analytics, and improve future iterations using a data driven approach.

In between our first and second season, I had tasked engineering with improving our UI framework to support a more visually impressive, vibrant, and engaging season pass feature. The second season (as well as all future seasons) would utilize the UI I designed above. Specifications were provided to the engineering team through annotated wireframes, prototypes, and mockups, that I then converted into tasks for tracking.

Additionally, UI that contained components with complex states were fairly common in WoT. State specifications such as the one pictured above were added to several features as well as our UX pattern library in order to help visually simplify some of the complexity of our systems, and ensure stakeholders were aware of the ways in which our content could be displayed.

RESULTS

Taking full advantage of our games as a service model, I was able to design two successful UIs for the new season pass feature that exceeded our expectations when launched. This two phased approach not only allowed us to collect initial player data and behavior, but also bought us time to improve our UI framework to support improved and futureproof designs. For this feature, I was able to:

• Design a comprehensive UI (and strategy) for a monetization feature that generated more revenue than previous seasonal content

• Solidify the work processes and pipelines between several disciplines including engineering, design, live ops, publishing, and art

• Create a one stop shop for players to view their progress and challenges that became a major factor in the core gameplay loop

ADDITIONAL WORK

Below are several wireframes or prototypes of other features or screens I designed for the World of Tanks 2020 refresh. These designs were either made as improvements to existing designs, or in support of new features being introduced to the game.