Gamestop / BAXY
Creating a digital hub for a gaming venue
Project Timeframe: 6 months (architecture through design)
My role: UX & UI Design
Team: UX Lead, Creative Director, UX Copywriter, Illustrator, Digital Production Artist, Product Manager
Background
Looking to expand its business model, GameStop began to develop a restaurant/bar concept for adults centered around the theme of gaming — video games, board games and beyond. This project would first be tested as a single beta location before potentially expanding as a franchise.
McGarrah Jessee partnered with IA Interior Architects to figure out how to bring this concept to life. What is this place?What kinds of customers might come here, and what would they want out of their experience?
Our researchers and strategists performed user and stakeholder interviews. Insights from these were synthesized into four main customer personas along with the primary needs of each.
This positioning informed the brand design and personality for BAXY (named for the four buttons on a game controller) as well as the physical space design. BAXY is a place where adults can experience a sense of play with friends over gourmet food and drinks. The space would include couch co-ops and rooms for groups, individual gaming stations, and even an arena for competitive gaming.
© IA Interior Architects
Enter: The Tablet
Mandated device: Samsung Tab A (Android) mounted in landscape
This is where the UX team (that’s me!) entered the project.
With so many different gaming systems and operational complexities, BAXY needed a customer-facing, central hub to unify the experience. Thus, stakeholders decided that digital tablets would be stationed throughout the venue.
Our team needed to solve the challenge of making the tablet interface a functional and delightful part of the customers’ experience at BAXY.
How might we…
Make the tablet interface a streamlined part of the overall BAXY experience?
Ensure that this highly functional tool is also easy and intuitive for BAXY visitors?
Inject the colorful BAXY brand personality without compromising usability and accessibility?
Stakeholder Requirements
This product needs to enable customers to:
Create and manage reservations
Order food and beverages
Browse and select games to play
Pay for time and purchases made
Manage account details
Developing the product
User Flows & Architecture
We mapped out user flows of all the different tasks a customer might need to accomplish on the tablet.
This exercise also helped us determine what features this product would need, which we prioritized using the MoSCoW method (Must, Should, Could, Won’t-have-time). Prioritization would allow us to deliver the product within the agreed-upon scope and not get bogged down with non-essential features.
From there we determined the interface’s information architecture and sitemap, which has a pretty flat hierarchy.
Wireframes
With overall architecture established, the team built wireframes for each screen. We iterated on the content hierarchy and layout, and made sure we were aligned with stakeholders before moving on to design.
The food ordering API and other important functionality was still being determined by the client during this time which posed challenges. But we kept moving forward with the information we had, knowing things may need to change.
Design
BAXY brand guidelines had already been established at a high level. But we still needed to make specific design decisions for a touchscreen interface, like choosing accessible HEX color combinations and considering typeface styles and UI elements.
We initially presented high-level design choices in the form of a style tile to get client approval before designing each screen in full.
Once our clients approved a style tile, I built and maintained a more comprehensive style guide as we made design refinements along the way.
Onboarding Flow
Create Reservation Step
Digital Game Listing Page
Drinks Listing Page
User Account Achievements
Review My Tab and Checkout
Next Steps
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the BAXY project was indefinitely shelved and hasn’t become a reality.
But in an ideal world, I would have taken the following steps after delivering the high-fidelity prototype:
Work directly with developers to bring the product to life
Participate in product QA and testing to work out any bugs
Visit the beta-test BAXY location and perform contextual user testing
Use those insights to work on an improved version 2 of the product
Challenges & Learnings
We weren’t scoped to perform user testing during this project. We did our best to validate assumptions by performing informal testing (when possible) and relying on best practices.
Many details of the overall BAXY experience were still being determined in tandem with our work on the tablet interface. This resulted in unexpected roadblocks and pivots along the way. Our team learned to think quickly on our feet and adapt.
Going through these challenges together with our clients fostered a positive working relationship.
I learned a whole lot about gaming!