Accessibility Design: Inclusive Gaming Community
PROJECT
Designing a safe community gamers especially female games to enjoy games together
TEAM
Brendon | Angela | Me
RESPONSIBILITIES
BACKGROUND
User Research
Accessibility Design
MY ROLE
UX Researcher
UI Designer
Our group is interested in exploring how we can make the gaming community more inclusive to Women/POC/PWD.
Currently, the video game community is dominated by male players. On the developer end, there is a lack of research done on people of color, women, and people with disabilities. As a result, video games offer 4x more male protagonists than female protagonists.
The opportunity is to make the gaming industry more inclusive for everyone. Also expressing the importance and lack of diversity in the gaming community.
Motivation
We’re interested in creating this inclusive platform for gamers because we strongly believe that there should be a safer gaming community for everyone. We want to discover how we can create features to connect gamers with similar interests and goals while using a variety of strategies to encourage users to show respect, empathy, and care for each other.
Goal
1. Bring awareness to the gaming community
2. To express the importance of diversity and inclusion
3. Bring a safe and enjoyable gaming experience to all
Product Preview
Process
Research
Define problem & target users
Persona
Competitive reviews
Empathy map
Translating ideas into
prototype
Color Evaluation
Annotation
Discover
For this project, we wanted to design an inclusive design with accessibility awareness. After a round of discussion and many possible topics we witness in our daily lives, we would like to focus our project on female gamers in the gaming community. The reason for that is because we read an article criticizing how unfair the gaming world is to females regardless of the large number of female games. I am also a part of the online gaming community and totally felt that female gamers are being treated with prejudice. Research has shown that the gaming industry still considers female gamers as an afterthought -- a minority in the industry.
Women Gamer Statistics
47%
in the gaming industry.
42%
want to see less trolling/more moderated content in the gaming community.
36%
play a variety of different games depending on the time of day or to match / manage mood
17%
playing games several times a day or week, who feel they belong in the gaming community
Research Insights & Issues
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Female gamers don't feel welcomed in the gaming community. They experience harassment, flirtatious, and abusive comments. They are more likely to get harassed because of their gender and hide their true identity to avoid such harassment or quit playing video games altogether.
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Female characters often have weak and distressed qualities in order to fulfill male fantasies.
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Female gamers want to see a stronger network of female gamers, consists of mentors and allies who can help provide a safe space for female gamers to discuss how to combat discrimination and feel more comfortable playing online.
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The term gamer is typically referring to male gamers.
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There's a lack of a platform that's designed just for females. Most of the gaming platforms are dominated by male players.
“I’m in a League of Legends team and I’m the only girl. They don’t treat me any differently but when I play alone I’ve had men completely shut me down in game, try to leave the game because they “don’t want to play with a girl” and I’ve had a huge amount of sexist and derogatory comments.”
Empathy Map
We created this map as part of our research to get a clear understanding of the users.
Persona
This persona was created to target our users. We created 3 female personas showing different backgrounds.
Jules
Student
22 | Transgender
Rebecca
Engineer
34 | Single mom
Tina
Business owner
45 | Dyslexia
Define
Competitive Review
Key Findings | Great ideas to learn
Key Findings | Things to avoid
! Lack of visual hierarchy and lack of spacing between lines could cause challenges for some users.
! Stay away from this color scheme since it may be challenging for people with color blindness to read.
Final Design
Quick walk-thru
Find & connect players
Gamers would like to look for teammates that share a similar interest in playing games.
For many multi-player games, the system automatically pairs you up with other players with no filter or preferences, which may be toxic.
+ Filters for gamers to help them find the best match to play games
+ Mentor option to help beginners find someone to guide them
+ "Like" button so players know the reputation of this player
Build a safe community
Many female players have experienced harassment online.
+ Report & block feature
Accessibility Tools
We designed accessibility tools to help those with vision disabilities and provide personalization.
+ Easy to switch a feature on or off
+ Ability to adjust colors, text, alignment, and orientation.
Prototype
Accessibility Design | Color Blindness
Tritanopia
< slide >
Protanopia
We want to make sure the colors we selected are readable to those who have colorblind. Below shows 2 examples with colorblind filter (Protanopia & Tritanopia)
Some design guide:
1 Utilize colors and symbols
2 Use text labels
3 Avoid certain color combination, ex: blue & purple or green red
4 Make the action buttons stand out
Accessibilities Annotations
This is used to identify and communicate accessibility within design deliverables.
Reflection
I enjoyed learning about accessibility in the digital world. When I was an interior designer, ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) is at all aspects of the design.
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