Project Title: Video in the Call of Duty Companion App—A capstone project in partnership with Activision
Role: UX/UI, Design Research, Information Architect
Skills: Stakeholder Interview, Secondary Research, Competitive Analysis, Heuristic Review, Netnography, Storyboarding, Card Sort, Wireflows, User Testing, Interactive Prototype
Timeframe: September - December 2020
Tools: Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, Google Workspace, & Zoom
Team: Ami Kubota, Genevieve Johnson, & Will Gamez
“Increase entertainment and engagement amongst beginner, casual, and experienced players interacting with the Call of Duty Companion app by integrating video tutorials into the app.”
Increase entertainment and engagement amongst beginner, casual and experienced players interacting with the Call of Duty Companion app by integrating video tutorials into the app. Before this design sprint, we had been working in teams of two. We interviewed our stakeholders, consulted domain experts, conducted primary and secondary research, and performed an exhaustive competitive analysis before presenting our findings to Activision. The Activision team felt that our two teams could benefit from synthesizing our previous data and moving forward together since a common theme linked the research of our two groups. Our teams both were leaning toward video as a means to reach players.
Problem:
Before testing, we had assumed that users would want in-app video content to be, if not created by, at least filtered and vetted by Activision. We thought that players would only trust videos created by big names in the world of Call of Duty, like Dr. Disrespect and members of local Call of Duty League Teams. However, we discovered that the majority of testers wanted to use this feature as a way to find unknown video creators. We realize that this may lead to legal concerns on Activision’s part, but the only kind of “vetting” users wish to see from the app is to ensure all search results are Call of Duty related. Otherwise, they want the same breadth and variety that YouTube offers.
Insights:
Videos Made for Me: How can one feature cater to beginners, casuals, and hardcore players? “Because I’m an experienced Call of Duty player, I don’t think ‘Video Tutorials’ are made for players at my level. I do watch gameplay videos online, but it’s hard to stay ahead of the curve on patch notes through videos alone. I wish I could search for extremely niche videos to fine-tune my gameplay.”
Solutions:
As for other feedback, users wanted a way to filter their search. They wanted closed captioning on videos and the ability to search videos through closed captioning if they remembered a line from a video but not the video’s title. They want a “Video of the Day” featured on the homepage. They want to replay a video after watching, cancel autoplay, and adjust stream settings. They wish to rate content, even with a simple mechanism like an upvote or downvote and read reviews. Unfortunately, openly written comments are a quick path to outright toxicity, so we decided to override that particular request. About half of our testers struggled to find “Subscribed Channels” when requested and didn’t feel that it belonged in the same place as “Saved.” We listened to our users and implemented several changes based on their feedback.
