Background
For my Master’s capstone, I collaborated with Insomniac Games to evolve the user experience of settings management within console video games. Our aim was to increase the immersion and effectiveness of settings optimization while ensuring inclusivity, accessibility, developmental feasibility and scalability.
My team and I began this project in late 2022 and over the course of ten months we delivered a design framework and prototype representing a best practice approach for implementing settings which gained adoption by Insomniac Games to be implemented in forthcoming game development.
My role
I played the roles of Product Designer and supporting UX Researcher conducting market research, running observations and interviews, creating a conceptual framework, defining metrics, designing user flows, functional prototypes and usability testing.
I collaborated closely with UX researchers, gameplay engineers, and designers at Insomniac. Through these efforts, we were able to improve player utilization of settings by 26% with our prototype, resulting in significant positive user sentiment in confidence making settings adjustments and better accommodating user’s needs and learning preferences.
Opportunity - Augmenting settings discovery
Western AAA game studios have implemented large, robust settings menus focused on accessibility and inclusivity for players with disabilities who have been excluded from gaming. While this offers heightened accessibility and customization, it also takes players more time to navigate through, discover and understand each setting's impact on their gaming experience.
Many settings often go underutilized and misunderstood, especially by players without disabilities, and detract from desired immersion. This was an opportunity to evolve the settings experience to more intuitively convey a setting’s impact on the experience, more closely match users’ assets and needs, and reduce information architecture complexity.
Understanding the current settings landscape
After establishing the problem space and additional challenges, my team and I conducted secondary research and comprehensive competitive analysis to orient ourselves to the current state of settings implementation in console video games, before transitioning into primary research for deeper understanding.
Our primary user research consisted of surveys, user interviews, card sorting, and gameplay observations. The data from these methods was then synthesized into these overarching research findings:
Prior experience define player expectations
Users tend to approach settings adjustments with pre-established expectations based on their prior gaming and current lived experiences
Settings changes rely on learning and memory
Users must learn how to optimize the settings for each game they play and remember which settings they previously adjusted for that game
Defining design principles
Before jumping into design, my team and I translated our research findings into some key guiding UX principles to keep the team focused on the right priorities. It also helped us improve the decision process of the team, reduced misalignment and brought clarity on what matters.
Be inclusive of experience and ability levels
The design should enable users to efficiently and effectively optimize settings to fit their needs, no matter their experience and ability levels
Design directions
We used whiteboard sessions and team brainstorms to generate several concepts. I subsequently turned the following three design directions we established during initial ideation into low-fidelity UI mocks to evaluate with real users and stakeholders.
Settings sandbox – A fail-state-free area to adjust settings in real-time to understand how they affect the experience. By adjusting in the sandbox rather than navigating settings menus, players can more efficiently adjust settings to fit exact requirements without missing gameplay or narrative experiences
Prompted settings – In-game settings prompts offer the ability to engage with the prompt to enter the settings menu or sandbox to adjust settings for the current in-game scenario. These prompts recommend settings that most benefit players based on their location in-game with menu shortcuts that allow players to seamlessly enter the settings menu through a guided process.
Supporting supplements – Additional settings enhancements address existing settings paradigms to ensure players have more control in optimizing settings while reducing time spent in menus. By providing shortcuts and micro-features, players can more efficiently and effectively adjust settings in existing menu information architecture
Defining a connected user flow & style guide
After evaluating the low-fidelity prototype with players and Insomniac team members, my team and I established a style guide and user flow to guide our development to high-fidelity and ensure touchpoints with the most valuable features of the design in a single cohesive experience. I iterated upon our designs and created a high-fidelity prototype in collaboration with another designer to incorporate feedback and facilitate multiple rounds of testing and iteration with users.
Centering the settings sandbox in onboarding
To address feedback from users and stakeholders around learning preferences and technical limitations respectively, the settings sandbox was shifted to be the central feature of the interactive onboarding setup experience. Rather than offer all settings for testing, only a curated list of commonly used settings and accessibility presents were made available. Additional supporting information was added to further player guidance when onboarding a new game.
The interactive setup was further iterated upon to emphasize interactive playability in the settings sandbox: menu sizes / locations were adjusted, additional HUD elements were added, and the ability to close the window was further emphasized. Settings categories in the interactive setup were also expanded to include deeper drill-down functionality.
This final design enables preemptive settings optimization when beginning a new game to spend less time and effort adjusting during gameplay and narrative experiences.
UX for settings sandbox, interactive onboarding after several iterations
Transitioning to diegetic prompts
During user testing, we found that users were thrilled with the addition of prompted settings adjustments which they found intuitive and time-saving. But they also had concerns about non-diegetic prompts (like those displayed after repeated in-game fail states) negatively impacting player motivation which we quickly addressed in the next iteration.
Additional iterative refinements were made to support timer-based dismissal to reduce extraneous input and upon interaction with the prompt, players now navigate directly into the sandbox rather than the settings menu to make guided adjustments. Supporting iconography and additional guiding elements were also added to further support plays in their setting adjustment process.
This final design enables the effective optimization of relevant settings when players encounter new gameplay elements that shift their current assets or needs so that their experience remains optimal.
UX for diegetic prompted settings adjustments after several iterations
Refining supplements into adjusted settings
We made a strategic decision to refine settings supplements into solely adjusted settings – representing setting values changed from their default. The combined presence of additional settings supplements such as favorited settings and settings history created challenges in information architecture and operational logic. Adjusted settings were refined based on feedback as these provided the most value for settings optimization.
This final design promotes the more efficient location and adjustment of previously changed settings to accommodate for players often forgetting which settings they’ve previously adjusted and where to find them within the information architecture, detracting from time spent experiencing gameplay and narrative.
UX for managing adjusted settings after several iterations
Outcome
My team and I presented our design framework and supporting research to Insomniac Games leadership in April 2023, receiving highly positive feedback from the team. In our final round of user testing, we found:
26%
Increase in player utilization of settings with the new design prototype
90%
Of players felt their needs and learning preferences were better accommodated
Through this project, I was reminded of the value of bringing accessibility to the forefront of the design process in creating equity and inclusivity for all users. I was also reminded of how users’ lived experiences directly shape how they interact with and understand a design, emphasizing why this must be centered throughout the design process.
This work will remain crucial to Insomniac Games, providing an essential foundation for advancing console video game settings management experiences in a user-centric and technically viable manner.