Contents.
Company overview.
MrQ is a UK based online casino. What differentiates the company is that it builds all of its core tools in-house, as well as develops its own catalogue of games.
Project overview.
As part of MrQ's 2023 strategy, the company planned to launch classic mini games like Tower, Mines, Keno, Crash, and Scratch cards - games that are popular but rarely found in online casinos.
The team faced two main challenges connected to realizing the vision:
1. Game creation was slow and resource-intensive. MrQ needed a way to rapidly prototype and validate new games.
2. Game developers worked directly with visual designers without UX oversight, this lead to a lack of standardization for game flows, states, components, and UX specifications which made releasing new games drastically slower.
Goals.
Create standard and reusable UIs for each mini game type.
Create a design system to power all mini games, ensuring highly reusable components.
Create a framework that enables game artists to produce implementable game art quickly.
My responsibilities.
Design game interfaces for all mini games.
Interaction design.
Prototyping.
Building a design system.
Standardize the game asset craetion process.
Research.
I began by playing developer game prototypes for different games to help me understand their basic functionality. I then analyzed competitor implementations of similar games which helped me note discrepancies, and gaps.
This exercise was conducted to serve as an opportunity to address any opportunities for improving the game experiences before building our new framework.
Final design.
This section features a few select games for the sake of brevity. The project spanned just a little over 2 months, during which the design system and 7 new mini games were designed.
Developers were given a front-end system allowing them to manage a game portfolio with less effort. Game artists were given a framework for producing implementable game art rapidly.
Mobile game UIs.
Design system.
Keno.
Tower.
Scratch.
*Please note that this mock was skinned by myself for demonstrative purposes.
Learnings.
Design isn’t only about addressing user and business needs but equally about creating solutions which streamline in-house efforts.
Sometimes teams aren’t sure what the vision is. Designers are well equipped and situated to put ideas in front of teams quickly, with the aim of bringing alignment and direction.
Never assume that ‘the old way’ for doing things works well. When teams copy competing products they stand to copy what works and what doesn’t. Challenge and improve!
Having a sound framework for approaching design can make teams exponentially more productive, enabling them to achieve more in less time. How people work is as important as the work itself.
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