Where is the nearest tournament?

I frequently get an itch to play Magic the Gathering (MTG) with my friends. One of my best friends and I often travel to different cities to hang out. And when we are in a new city and have to scratch that itch, we always ask, “Where?”. With my design thinking and love for the trading card community, I conceptualized a way to find tournaments nearby.

Challenge

Help players find TCG events and tournaments wherever they are. Improve the current way they are finding and registering for tournaments.

Solution

Journey is the all-in-one app that does everything that a TCG player would love. After hours of researching and interviewing TCG players, I designed an app with features that would help players improve their overall experience.

Market Research

I started my research with the way I typically find tournaments: going on Yelp, calling stores around the area, and/or looking through local Facebook groups. I wanted to fully understand the different processes of discovering events and why there wasn’t a centralized solution.

To help with my research, I made a research guide.

I researched the market on how local game stores and companies promote tournaments and events. Was discoverability of events important to them or did they put more emphasis on their products?

Ever since the pandemic, trading cards gained more popularity, always selling out at big retailers.

There isn’t an app that identifies events for various card games.

Survey

I conducted a survey to discover how players are currently finding events and their experience with it. This method would let me understand from various card games and skill levels.

A couple of questions I used for the survey:

Competitor Analysis

Whenever I attend events, there’s usually a notable amount of players in attendance, so event marketing is reaching these players. But is it the best way? Could the experience be improved? Also, stores that are already popular and have strong communities tend to have great turnouts. But what about the other stores? I decided to look at the current ways players are looking for events.

I looked at what current competitors are doing well so I could improve upon them. Then, I analyzed their weaknesses to look for opportunities that I could focus on.

1:1 Interviews

To better understand players, I conducted 1:1 interviews to learn about how they are currently finding tournaments. I also interviewed players based on their competitive levels: casual, experimental, or competitive.

To help me conduct the interviews, I created an interview guide.

Participants: 5

Age: 20-35

Objective:

• Understand how players are finding tournaments

• Identify if they are satisfied with the current methods

• Discover what they look for in a tournament

What participants said

Insight

Tedious process

Most participants mentioned how tedious the process was. They were annoyed with how they are currently finding tournaments. They spent more than 10 minutes for something that could be done in a couple minutes.

Centralized process

Participants want the process to be centralized where they could find events and register for it all in one place.

Playgroup

A crucial thing that many participants mentioned was playgroups, where players could create events, where they could play and practice with other players. Many participants also love just being able to hang out with other players.

Persona

After I finished researching and interviewing people on their experience with finding tournaments, I created a persona.

The persona will be helping me with my design decisions as I move forward. Furthermore, it will help me be as user-centric as possible.

Meet Joe, a competitive player who is also very busy with his work. Since he has being playing Pokemon since he was in high school, there is a constant itch to play throughout the week. He doesn’t have time to look up all the stores or call them. He also has to commute to different cities for his work.

Customer Journey Map

To understand the players from the moment they want to find a tournament until their registration, I created a customer journey map. This helped me visualized the ups and downs that players experience during this process.

How Might We

With the research and 1:1 interviews, I identified a couple of pain points players encountered. I used the “How Might We” method so I could brainstorm ways to solve these problems. I didn’t want to be fixated on a single, narrow solution, but rather, get creative with how I approach the problems.

Project Goals

I created project goals to note the different aspects from the business, player, and technical side. Due to the time constraint, I won’t be able to address all the goals. I will focus on those that overlaps.

Feature Product Roadmap

After I identified what aspects overlapped. I created a feature product roadmap to help me prioritize the features I would design for the app. Again, due to the time constraint, I decided to focus on features for the players and the Must Haves.

Sitemap

After I prioritized the features for the app, I created a hierarchy for the app. These features would be the core of the app and what players would be interacting with based on my research.

Wireframe

Before I started focusing on the pixels, I decided to sketch some ideas I had for the app.

Due to how messy everything was, I digitized my sketches so it would look better. :D

I took inspiration from some of my favorite event finding apps such as Yelp, Eventbrite, and Ticketmaster. I also took additional inspiration from Dribbble and Behance.

I wanted an all in one solution for players:

• Searching for the right tournaments (format, date, and time)

• Registering for the tournaments

• Going to playgroups

I talked to my mentor about the solution and he wasn’t completely sold on it. He said wasn’t this just an app that books events? He was right, but he didn’t understand that most of these event apps focus on a bunch of things. It isn’t catered towards improving the trading card experience, we, the players go through. After I explain to him that trading card was very competitive and decks could range into the thousands and that prizing could go into the hundreds of thousands. He slowly understood the reason how the app could help players. He suggested that I shape it like a gaming app.

Competitive trading card is like poker but with images of monsters.

Hi-Fidelity Mockup

For the high fidelity mockup, I focused my efforts on the task flow screens as it highlighted the importance of the user journey. Thus, it would create a true experience for my participants during the usability test.

Usability Test

After I completed research, interviews, and design for an app. It was time to battle the final boss. Does Journey find the nearest tournament for wherever the player is? Quickly?

To answer this, I needed to test my MVP for usability and validate whether or not Journey was a viable solution.

I conducted the test with 5 participants. I did the test remotely over video due to the pandemic. I recruited casual and veteran players in order to have different perspectives on how they would use the app.

I created a usability guide as well.

Participants: 5

Age: 25-30

Task: Find a MTG standard event and register for it

Objective:

Understand the usability of Journey based on efficiency, frustrations, ease of use, and satisfaction

Insight

So did Journey solve the issues for the trading card community?

Well…….

This is what players said:

Finding tournaments

“I love how seemingly easy the app find all the nearby tournaments for me.”

“I didn’t even have to call a store.”

Finding playgroups

“I am a bit confuse between this and the home page.”

“Is this tournaments or people to play with?”

Registering for tournaments

“Wait that’s it? I am done?”

“It was quite intuitive to use Journey.”

Affinity Map

I created an affinity map to synthesize my data. This would help me focus on what to revise for my iteration. I categorized my data into pain points, visual issues, and what participants liked.

Revisions

From the affinity map, I prioritized the pain points and a couple of the visual issues. I focused on the issues that would hinder players’ experience. I wanted to improve Journey as much as possible within the time frame.

What’s the next journey?

The design of the app was quite well-received. They love how I approached the problem. They appreciated that I wanted to create something for the trading card community. I wanted to create this project because of my love for trading card games and I want to work in the gaming and entertainment industry. I learned a lot creating an end-to-end mobile app.

These comments from my participants makes me believe I am in an industry where I am helping people: