Game Design and Development at Berkeley
Reimagining a fresh, student friendly experience for Berkeley’s most popular gaming club
Project Type
Client Work
Skills
Prototyping
Visual Design
Interaction Design
Role
Product Designer
Project Lead
Team Members
4 Designers
Timeline
Sep 2023 -
Oct 2023
My team of 4 and I were by tasked by Game Design and Development at Berkeley, a UC Berkeley gaming club, to create a fun yet minimalistic website within 4 weeks.
In addition to designing, I also handled communicating with GDD and navigating my team through the UX journey by initiating weekly meetings.
Modernizing a gaming student club’s web interface
OVERVIEW
RESEARCH AND FINDINGS
GDD’s current site lacked modern, engaging UI
I decided that my team research other students clubs’ and gaming companies’ sites. Our competitive analysis gave us inspiration on how to make intuitive, exciting interfaces.
My team and I took a look at GDD’s current site and immediately noticed visual issues:
Reducing text & increasing visual appeal
IDEATION
We applied our findings into sketches of a redesigned home page to lay a foundation for prototyping.
We moved onto our first iterations of lo-fi prototypes in which I had each person individually designed a page based on our sketches.
Nailing the interface, iteration by iteration
LO-FI
MID-FI
My team each produced hi-fis of our own vision of a fun, minimalist home page and sent them to GDD gauge what visual direction they wanted.
Adding in the fun to GDD
USER TESTING
Optimizing for Readability and Visual Engagement
When students from GDD tested our mid-fi prototypes, some testers brought up how our color scheme blends in with the background and how the ‘Bear Jams’ page lacked visual engagement.
We made our final adjustments like adjusting text color for readability and reorganizing information architecture.
Welcome to Game Design & Development at Berkeley!
REFLECTION
Leading a design project for the first time
The club was extremely happy with our redesign, and the process gave me an idea of what a leadership position looked like in UX, which develops some unique reflecting points:
Take the initiative to communicate: Periods of hesitancy when redesigning could’ve been relieved if I communicated with my client more.
It’s okay to let loose creatively: Being a project manager made me feel greater pressure to make safer design choices. I wish I let my team explore more of the fun wishes GDD had for us.
Check out my other work here!
USER EXPERIENCE • MOBILE • DESIGN CHALLENGE
Bringing light to unrepresented features for a more enjoyable pickup experience.