Project Overview
Call of Duty: Warzone Caldera is a free-to-play battle royale video game developed by Infinity Ward and Raven Software and published by Activision. The issue that I am trying to solve is
" How may weapon customization be made quicker and simpler, so that it doesn't act as a barrier for new players? "
My Role
Why Did I start this Project?
I have been playing Warzone since it came out in 2020. After playing it for a while, me and my friends were not satisfied with the weapon customization system for Warzone. Also as a new player, it was hard for me to get used to the system as it was a bit complex.
So I decided to conduct some research to find out the pain points of gamers such as myself and try to improve it.
My Design Process
Competitive Analysis
I conducted a competitive analysis on popular first-person shooters such as Call of Duty, Payday 2, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, etc to see what the industry standard is.
My Key takeaways from the competitors are as follows -
1. Most of them use a tabbed bar to navigate the menus as this navigational paradigm is very common for consoles
2. None of them had any way to assist players to make informed decisions about choosing attachments without spending a lot of time trying those out.
3. Easily accessible weapon customization screen
User Research
I conducted User research to understand pain points and needs. I used the quantitative method and did a survey with 15 gamers. Here are my survey results:
Understanding the Player
The following are the top goals for gamers for the weapon customization screen, according to the study I conducted and my interviews with friends and family who play Warzone:
User Stories
I created some user stories after understanding the players in the previous section to aid me in making design decisions.
How might we solve these problems?
I prepared How Might We statements in an effort to come up with answers while taking into account the user stories and needs outlined in the previous sections. Since franchises release games every single year, it is important to know what works and what needs to be improved. From my research and competitive analysis, these are the solutions I came up with :
1. I decided to stick with the tabbed menu as that is a very commonly used menu for console games ( and since I am taking a console-first approach )
2. I decided to innovate by proposing that an AI will assist players by selecting the best attachments from the available ones according to the playstyle of the player
User Flow
This is the user flow showing access to the weapon customization screen
User Journey Map
Here is the User Journey Map showing the actual product flow ( Call of Duty: Warzone ) and how my feature can help elevate the experience for gamers.
Scenario:
Rohit is a new gamer who just picked up a copy of Call of Duty: Warzone. He is excited and can't wait to start playing warzone
Assumptions
The following assumptions were made for this project in order to assist me to focus on the issue:
Wireframes
Since this is a cross-platform game, I started with the console (Playstation primarily in my wireframes, but the inputs can be replaced with respective inputs from other consoles). My prototype at the end shows the PC inputs. For the following reasons why I chose to go with the console first approach:
Interactive Prototype
To get a sense of the flow, an interactive prototype was created of the Mid-fidelity wireframes. The prototype is done taking PC input into consideration rather than the console. The purpose of the prototype was :
1. Test whether the wireframes and flow help are helping players reach their goals
2. Assess whether the interactions are clear and the flow linear
3. Test and fine-tune basic animations and transitions
1. Test whether the wireframes and flow help are helping players reach their goals
2. Assess whether the interactions are clear and the flow linear
3. Test and fine-tune basic animations and transitions
Technical Specifications
Here is the technical specification sheet which will act as a guide for developers to build out the features. As this is a multi-platform game, I had to think of different input methods for different platforms.
Conclusions: Considerations
I would have loved to conduct more user research to validate my solutions. As this is the first iteration, I would consider doing usability playtests to see if the solution works with this implementation method/strategy. Even though there is not enough scope or budget to do widescale playtesting, I have other alternatives such as internal playtesting between family & friends, remote playtesting with recruited participants, etc.
Some other additional features/dependencies that should be considered:
Some other additional features/dependencies that should be considered:
