Speeding up in-game strategy lookups by 57%

Business Partner

Age of Empires 2 Voice Assistant

Role

UX/UI design.

Opportunity

Age of Empires 2 Voice Assistant allows users to quickly look up strategies for the game Age of Empires 2 Voice Assistant without navigating away from the game.

The game leans heavily on efficiently using your time. Age of Empires 2 Voice Assistant is voice controlled allowing the user to spend minimal time looking up strategies for the game and giving the user more time engaged in the game itself.

The app was text-heavy and hard to skim especially when the user was in the middle of a game (trying not to lose).

However I saw an opportunity to create an experience allowing the user to quickly look up a strategy against their opponent without distracting them from their game.

Product

Age of Empires II is a game steeped in strategy where the user gathers resources, builds up their economy, and develops an army to defeat their opponents.

Age of Empires 2 Assistant is a companion Windows app to be used during the game that lets you quickly lookup strategies against your opponent using a voice search.

Product Redesign

The following challenges needed to be overcome to provide an efficient and enjoyable user experience:

• The user would not know what type of opponent they would face until a battle started.
• The user would need to know how to take advantage of their team’s strengths.
• The user would need to know what strategies could be used against their opponents while minimizing time spent away from the game.
• There would need to be minimal text to increase scannability and maximise time efficiency.

I based my redesign over the original app’s concept but restructured the user flow and design to address the challenges stated above.

I prototyped a solution that flowed with the user’s game, reducing the information to the bare minimum a user needed to make the right strategic moves during gameplay.

The new design provided the following:

• Information was quickly scannable, allowing the user to focus more on the game and winning rather than sifting through strategy.
• The app fit seamlessly under the user’s game window, ensuring information the user needed was readily available.
• Icons and visual aids decreased the user's reading time.

Testing

After initial user tests, I found a speed increase in strategy lookup of around 80%.

I conducted timed testing of information gathering comparing the prototype with the legacy app for the following:

• Team bonus.
• Unique unit.
• User civilizations bonuses.

Upon initial testing I found the information gathering time decreased for the following:

• Unique unit by 35%.
• User civilizations bonuses by 83%.

However finding the Team Bonus lookup times increased by 33%.

During testing I also found the following issues with my design:

• Users need the ability to see both their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, not just their weaknesses.
• The main focus needed to be the gameplay window, not the companion app therefore the app window needed to be more compressed.
• Reading the team bonus was difficult and not optimized and therefore did not achieve the objective of efficiency.

UX Changes

I made the following design amendments:

• Reduced height of the companion app.
• Added a third column with opponents strengths.
• Changed title styling to make opponent content stand out more.
• Changed the background color of My Bonuses to help it stand out more.

More Testing

I conducted the same timed test I did of information gathering comparing the updated prototype with the legacy app for the following:

• Team bonus.
• Unique unit.
• User civilizations bonuses.

Upon initial testing I found the information gathering time decreased for the following:

• Unique unit by 51%
• User civilizations bonuses by 62%
• Team Bonus 59%

Outcome and results

Overall speed of retrieving information was decreased by 57% between the updated prototype and the legacy app.

Currently the app is in development.