Objective

Take one of the most significant IPs in the world and turn it into a slot game. It needs robust social interaction, a feature-rich environment, incredible art, and easy to navigate and understand. Target devices iOS, Android, and the Web.

Understanding the Domain

Market research / Competitive Analysis 
Competitive analysis all starts here. I'm not a slots player, so for me, this was a foreign land ruled by spinning reels and enough coin showers to make your head spin. My first step was to become a slot player. I downloaded the top 5 grossing slots games in the iOS store and played them all. I took screenshots of different game mechanics, big wins, award screens, coin grants, token grants; you name it. I wanted to see it all. I even took a day to research in Vegas while on vacation to understand what drives this market.

After playing the competition's games, it was time to play all of Zynga's slot games. I wanted to see what we had in our library, how the games were together, and how our game mechanics worked.

This step is something that I haven't stopped doing. I regularly play the other top slot games to see how they are evolving and be aware of the changing market.

Getting the idea out of my head

Drawing out rough ideas to share

I've always been a fan of getting pen to paper and sketching out my ideas. They are rarely pretty, but it gets my thoughts out of my head onto paper where I can see all of them at once. Some of these turned into parts of the game some go it the trash. I still sketch out a rough before I start something that is new. I sketch flows and screen designs and make notes to myself about what the requirements are for a given screen or user flow.With Game of Thrones being a new IP, we had a blank slate. I produced sketches and loose wireframes of key screens to get the project started. To the left, you can see an early concept of the game lobby.

Wireframes: Low Fidelity

Sketch | Overflow
The next phase is my favorite, the player's journey through each section of the game. For me, this is where it all starts to come together. I wireframe out each main flow, then start on all the offshoots. During this, I am in communication with the stakeholders about what they want to see. I like getting feedback early on and keeping the powers that be involved as the feature develops. During this time, the project managers (PMs) are working on the spec as well, so there is a good dialogue between us.

Deliverables to Stakeholders | Guided Walkthroughs with HiFi wireframes

SKETCH is my go-to for screen design, but it's not great for showing a large group of people. I use Overflow.IO to show the flows to the stakeholders, Ux teammates, and Engineering. In my experience, this helps find the holes and missteps in a player's journey.

I've attached an example of a walkthrough that takes I would do for the team. Using the HiFi wireframes, I would create an app map and illustrate how everything is connected. This proved to be extremely helpful In showing how things would work. In addition to this, I also deployed the principal to create animations when needed to show movement on the screen.

See more user flows here.

Visual Design

Part of my job is to create art for the features that I wireframe. We have built an extensive library of assets that makes this a bit faster, but there is still plenty of custom things to go around. The visual design can be anything from a MOTD ( message of the day) to a new dialogue. The completed visual design screens are placed back into the wireframe flows to provide a more accurate view for the engineers and stakeholders.