Performed product analysis and usability evaluations to redesign the Playstation 5's interface and allow it to appeal more to the trophy hunting community.
Playstation is a gaming company, parented by Sony Interactive Entertainment, which produces consoles, video games, merchandise, and more. It was first introduced in 1994 and has approximately 103 million active users as of September 2022.
The newest addition to this franchise, the Playstation 5 console, has been in high demand for the past 2 years, needing weekly restocks and being sold by third party retailers for over half it's market value.
Along with the console's release came a lot of praise as well as outrage at the key differences between the new and previous console (the Playstation 4).
The Playstation 5 console's layout is not accessible or appealing to trophy hunters due to it's trophy menu being put out of the way and the mulitple steps it takes to unhide trophies within the list. The interface is upsetting to the community on a second level due to it's lack of customizability and removal of community groups and discussion pages.
Design an easier way to access trophy lists, unhide hidden content, and improve visuals
Reimagine the "What's New" tab for the Playstation 5 to showcase community, group, and friend activities
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Allow users to organize the homescreen, remove the news / explore tab, and enable customizable backgrounds
I evaluated the Playstation 5's user experience for it's effectiveness based on the Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability principles. This information displays why users might choose the Playstation 5 over another system, website, or service.
I evaluated the Playstation 5's user experience for moments when the product or experience impacted the behaviors, beliefs, emotions, and goals of the user. By understanding how the Playstation 5 helps users make choices, guide their thinking, or persuade them to take action, we can better redesign the interface without interfering with the product's influence over the users. Below is a list of some behaviors:
I analyzed Playstation, along with it's top competitors to evaluate their strengths and opportunities. This information helped me to understand the appeal across all competitors, their unique features, and why users might choose a particular service over another.
The approach for the user experience itself was based on the research conducted surrounding the needs and wants expressed by the community, and by following the prototyping goals to ensure that it met the expectations of the target audience and was a feasible solution to the problem.
The approach for the HCI experience itself was based on the research conducted surrounding the needs and wants expressed by the community, as well as being able to work off of existing material to ensure that it met the expectations of the target audience and was a feasible solution to the problem.
These expectations included the ability to easily access trophy lists, compare completion progress with friends, and interact with other community members and players while using the Playstation 5 console. In order to make the implementation of these new features painless and simple for the players, it was mocked up to only require a usb, containing the software edits, to be inserted into the system for a one-time download on the user’s part.
The advertisement was set up to be human-centered by expressing the customer’s main pain points using the trending games and complaints as examples.
The advertisement would be marketed on the two reddit forums r/PS5 and r/TrophyHunters to gain the most reach towards active members of this community and would easily link players to the software download for the home screen overwrite along with a step by step guide on how to download the content to the system and access it. The post itself will be a Promoted Post, or an in-feed ad placement, as offered by Reddit and explained by AdParlor. This should allow it to gain more views from any user scrolling past.
Since the advertisement was simply intended to attract users within the target community, the details of how the software would work and the visual mockups were kept at a minimum but will be elaborated on and incorporated into the final design presentation. The advertisement should be simplistic enough that any user scrolling past it can quickly understand the purpose of the post, the software, and the issues it targets without needing to divert their attention for too long since many of these users are on the reddit pages to explore community stories and typically wouldn’t pay as much mind to longer advertisements.
This advertisement for the prototype was based off of the above marketing approach. It features a simplistic design and aims to be accessible to the general public, but the target audience remains as Playstation's Trophy Hunting Community.
Putting together everything that was learned, I was able to create a high fidelity prototype of the Playstation 5's interface which would help our users fulfill their needs and meet their goals.
Added screenshots from when the trophy was achieved to the list.
Created a separate trophies tab within the system's main navigation, as opposed to the 3 click interaction originally required to navigate there.
Updated the home screen's interface to allow for tab customization, background customization, and community activities.
Through this project, I was able to conduct in-depth user research, analyze the product's uses, evaluate Playstation's human-computer interaction, and create both marketing and prototype high fidelity designs, which would ultimately help form an accessible and usable interface for Playstation 5's Trophy Hunting Community.
It was interesting to explore the different principles of human-computer interaction and human-centered design through this project. I now understand how to evaluate a product's appeal based on desirability, feasibility, and viability, which was something I did not know how to do prior to this project.
Thanks to this unsolicited redesign of the Playstation 5's interface, I feel more confident in assessing user experiences, prototyping user interfaces with Adobe Photoshop, and identifying problems that can arise with even the most in-demand products.
Once it was determined that the new design's changes improved accessibility and usability for Playstation's users, the redesign would be officially marketed to the users and the design would be implemented via USB download. Or if I'm lucky, Sony (Playstation) will implement these changes themselves to improve the user experience :)
Crafting digital experiences that blend creativity with functionality. Specializing in UI/UX design and interaction design.
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