The case study took place over two 8-week courses in Maryland Institute College of Art’s (MICA) UX Design graduate program, with the Fundamentals of User Research course corresponding with the case study’s Discovery Phase and the Fundamentals of UX Design course corresponding with the Design Phase.
The initial problem statement, “How might we make managing servers easier to enhance the experiences of users?’ was explored in the Discovery Phase. User research and competitive analysis were conducted in this phase as well; 8 user interviews illuminated current pain points and desires of users falling under ‘Community Leader’ and ‘Community Member’ types. This research also revealed a third user type- ‘Hybrid Users’ who exhibit characteristics of both user types and contributed to the development of the Builder and Casual user personas later used for the Design Phase as well.
The Discovery phase revealed current pain points and opportunities, such as: more built-in server tools, and more customization options both for servers and for individual experiences. The focus area I chose for further exploration in the Design Phase was the notion of easing the experience of checking a Discord server, particularly for users for whom having to catch up on missed activity in their communities is a pain point. This led to the ideation of the Daily Screen concept: much like the existing Welcome Screen experience in Discord Communities, the Daily Screen would appear the first time that a user checks a server in a day and allow owners to customize what their members see on their servers’ Daily Screen with ‘widget’ elements like announcements, top messages, active voice channels, and so forth.
Then, considering the perspectives of the three key players related to this opportunity allowed me to understand the goals of each and further validated the concept. Builders, who want to maintain active and growing communities, gain an additional engagement tool that could help members stay involved in the server; Casuals gain a better day-to-day experience on Discord by allowing them a way to more easily keep up with different groups and communities on Discord; Discord itself could gain more users and communities of different types and interests to their platform by including more engagement tools.
Taking into account Discord’s current design system and interface experience for server settings, wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes were created and then tested. A brief testing round with 2 users revealed that although the design felt intuitive and consistent with Discord, it was inefficient, unclear, and left users still wanting more customization options. The latest prototype addresses this feedback by adding more widget options and configurations, clearly defining these different options, and finally simplifying and consolidating the screens to allow for a smoother, more efficient set-up experience for the Daily Screen.
In trying to emulate Discord’s existing interfaces as closely as possible, the results became unintentionally muddled or less accessible. Making sure the experience remains simple and cohesive is important!
Although user research indicated that users desired a myriad of options to include in their ‘Welcome Screen,’ trying to accommodate all these options made for a more confusing experience.
More usability testing should be conducted to gather more feedback on user experience for target users (Builders and Casuals).
The current version of the prototype currently focuses on the ‘set-up’ experience of the Daily Screen feature - the prototype could be further expanded to encompass the experience of viewing the Daily Screen as a community member.
