Star Wars; Rise to Power

Star Wars Rise to Power is an upcoming 4x mobile strategy game title coming to mobile. Working on this game came with unique challenges around complex social structures, one of a kind UI needs, and intuitive taxonomy structures for a lot of various systems.

Take a look at the Google Play Store page!

The Problem

This complex game required complex thinking and UX consideration to ensure a memorable and intuitive experience.

My Role

UX Design System Owner, Interaction Design System Owner, Wireframe and Prototyping, UI Layouts, Localization and Accessibility, Implementation Overview and Testing, UX Evangelism, Outsource scheduling and review

EA Mobile, Charlottetown PEI

2017 - 2018

Benchmark Research

Knowing the brand, audience, and benchmark products was the first step. How are other Star Wars products consistent, how are they inconsistent? Who plays 4x mobile strategy games, why on mobile? What do these players value? I watched and played all of the Star Wars products I could get my hands on. I picked up some of the most popular 4x strategy games and played daily, my partner and I created teardown presentations in an effort to help the broader team better understand the user-groups and their lives.

Mapping the Ecosystem

During the project's early stages we identified that we needed to map the game systems, concepts, and screens, and as it turns out this was no small task. A paper prototype pinned right on the wall, large broken-up flow diagrams, and smaller PDF flows, these solutions required too much maintenance. We eventually landed on a plain-text content-inventory to track all aspects of the game, and break-out flow diagrams for complex systems.

Needing to map more than just screens meant multiple living documents.

Content taxonomy required an entirely different skill-set from UI and UX mapping.

With limited UX/UI team members, we needed a way to distribute designs and pattern-rules as they change with the needs of the project.

Using our documents to educate QA and Game Design teams we could empower them to incorporate UX thinking early.

Our living document system dictated broad stroke patterns for UI/UX and Game Design concepts.

Deliverables & Implementation

When I started as the sole UX Designer for the studio my primary tasks were to create wireframes, manage the outsourced UI/UX, and share UX knowledge around the studio. About 6 months in, my role was to be the go to person for wireframes and prototypes, pattern management, and overall owner of the cohesiveness and intuitiveness of the game's content, working under the lead UX designer.

Worked with the EA Research team to gather insights.

Generated annotated wireframe documents.

Designed system-flows.

Created and pitched interactive prototypes using AdobeXD.

Tested and selected appropriate prototyping tools when AdobeXD was no longer available (Axure, Framer, UXPin, Sketch, and Invision were tested).

Managed and ensured implementation of the UX design pattern library.

Owned and tested against text and numeric localization for UI.

Managed and distributed the documentation library.

Collaborated on iconography and visual asset taxonomy.

Placeholder and final content copywriting/UX Writing.

Multiple teams depended on my documents for a cohesive understanding of UI, UX, Game Design, Production Scheduling, and Copywriting needs.



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