Research

‘Accessibility options for The Last of Us Part II’ - Playstation

‘Video Game Accessibility: Examples & Best Practices’ - Accessibility, Kaspars Milbergs

‘God of War Ragnarök accessibility options’ - Playstation

‘Create better game settings options (handy checklist)’ - Game Developer, Kin Giguere

Focus

Accessibility

The settings themselves must be useful and applicable to the user, while the menus need to be readable and easy to navigate.

Modular

Settings should be easily added and removed and the layout should be easily altered.

Demonstration

The prototype needs to clearly communicate its concepts and usability to the rest of my team.

Testability

All settings should be clear enough to test easily and iterate on.

Figma Prototyping Process

  • Finalized Prototype

  • Stage 1, Blocking

  • Stage 2, Sections

  • Stage 3, Defining

  • Stage 4, Information

  • Stage 5, Adjustments

  • Stage 6, Polish

Execution

In-Engine

First, the settings prototype is given to my engineering mean to be prototyped in-engine.

Testing

Then the user research team, including myself, will study how users interact with the new features.

Iteration

The data collected will help me work with the engineers to make appropriate changes, and repeat this cycle as needed.

Finalize

Finally, the UI artist will make the finalized version of our menu, with the finalized settings.

Reflection

Accessibility

The whole reason I wanted to focus on the settings menu was to learn more about how I can make our game accessible to as many players as possible. This meant looking at accessibility options in other settings menus, reading many pages on what plays found most useful, and doing hands-on research on how these settings helped our particular game. All of this led to a better understanding of how menus themselves are built and how they can affect a user’s experience.

Working with a Team

This is the first time I worked on a UI element with a team, not just myself. That allowed me to have the freedom to design the features I wanted, without having to focus on how pretty it would look. I got to turn in the prototype and give it to our UI artist to turn it into something presentable.

I also did not have to be the person putting it in the engine. One of our programmers got that job. While that was refreshing, I have learned more about how to work with someone else in a different discipline when it comes to time-sensitive projects. Advocating your needs when it comes to someone else blocking you is a hard skill but one that I am happy to be learning now.

Prototyping in Figma

Before working on this project I only had experience using Figma for a few larger projects. I specifically wanted to do this prototype in Figma to learn more and become more comfortable. Learning a new tool, especially one with so many functions, can be very stressful. Fortunately, I fought my urge to use another tool I am more proficient with, and I got very used to looking to external sources to teach myself.