Client: Turn 10 Studios (Microsoft)
Established in 2001, Turn 10 Studios produced Forza Motorsport, Microsoft’s entry into the competitive market of video game racing. The brand is known for producing high quality, realistic racing games for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. This high standard is expected on any auxiliary products associated with Forza because of the brand's affiliation with Microsoft.
Project Brief
The move to Xbox One gave Turn 10 the unique opportunity to create a franchise hub Xbox app (a destination for gamers to interact with their favourite titles when outside of “game mode”) to launch alongside their next title, Forza Horizon 2.
One of the key drivers of the project (and specifically its release as an Xbox One app) was the promotion of Forza Rewards to existing players within context of the game. Although this feature was somewhat unknown to the majority of Forza gamers, those who know about it, loved it and the numbers proved it; gamers who utilized the Forza Rewards feature played the game for a longer period of time over those who did not (sorry, exact numbers are under NDA).
After several releases of Forza Hub on Xbox One, the next target was to utilized the Windows Universal App platform to move the Hub from Xbox One to desktop and tablet on Windows 10.
UX Toolkit
Stakeholder Workshops
User Interviews
User Mental Model
User Experience Strategy
Story Mapping
Paper Prototyping
Keynote Prototyping
Interaction Design (Gesture, Voice, Controller, Touch)
User Interface Design (Xbox One & Win10)
Usability Testing
Project Objectives
- Increase time with the Forza franchise (either in-game or within the Hub).
- Promote Forza Rewards to existing Forza gamers.
- Increase awareness and help migrate gamers from one game to the next (including across sub-franchises).
- Increase awareness of Forza editorial content, events, and photos.
- Be an exemplary first party vendor on the platform: redefining design patterns, design for controller, gesture, and voice, and be the exemplar Xbox One and Windows 10 application for others to follow.
Fun Fact
In Forza Horizon 2 presents Fast & Furious, rapper Ludacris voices one of the in-game characters. Early on in the game he directs the player to collect Forza Rewards by saying “Hey man, you gotta go check out the Hub!” I knew I’d finally made it as a designer :-)
Process
Discovery: Xbox One App
No one on our team had ever designed a product for the 10-foot experience (television) or a product that users would navigate using a controller, voice or gesture. We needed to become experts in the space in order to be able to design for such a new medium, so we delved into an extensive research cycle. We interviewed stakeholders and gamers. We consumed as much written content as there was out there on the space, although most pertained to games, not products. We reviewed every Xbox One app available. Unfortunately, as the platform was still very new at the time, we were only able to test less than 20 apps (many of which were similar to the template apps available from Microsoft); it was clear, this product was going to be an exemplar for Xbox One apps going forward.
Design & Development: Xbox One App
As part of being a first party app (apps directly affiliated with a Microsoft studio), we needed to utilize many features of the platform most third party apps had underutilized. Therefore, before defining features and moving onto design, we needed to have a framework for how we would design within the constraints allotted to us by the 10-foot experience. I was tasked with understanding these constraints, including design patterns, accessibility considerations, and the NUI (natural user interface: controller, voice, and gesture) and establish a structure for the team.
The Team
3 UX Designers
1 Art Director
2 Creative Directors
1 Producer
8 Frontend Developers
2 Backend Developers
1 Quality Assurance
Given our timeline to have an MVP version to release alongside the next major title release, the initial version of Forza Hub would include a small set of features:
- Forza Rewards: the primary reason for the Hub on Xbox One.
- Forza News: content specifically from and about Forza.
- Community News: content about the racing community.
- Move to Next Tier: point gamers toward the areas in-game that would move level them up the fastest.
- Friends Leaderboard: Forza is a single-player game so this feature was included to help promote asynchronously competition between Xbox friends.
Throughout the design process we continually tested our designs using paper, keynote, and real-code (on the Xbox) prototypes. A formal round of usability testing was held in Redmond, Washington (Microsoft’s head campus) to locate any usability issues before initial release. We also used the data collected to help determine new features and how current features may change in subsequent releases.
Discovery, Design & Development: Windows 10 App
With this second iteration of Forza Hub, we were once again moving to an adolescent platform with a very small ecosystem of available applications (many of which being direct ports from iOS or Android). As the Windows 10 platform was still in development, and a part of our mandate as a first party app, we were tasked with exemplifying Windows 10 features and patterns: our app would be one of the first apps gamers got their hands on upon release. This proved difficult and a bit of a moving target as most design patterns on the platform were in flux and changing on a weekly basis with each update. To counteract this, we set ourselves a goal: evolve current patterns and define our own to release a product superior to anything else available on Windows 10 (thereby becoming the example that others would follow).
Another key goal I set for the new Windows 10 app was to streamline the interface and remove the artificial layers of navigation required for the Xbox One context. The two areas that this is most apparent are:
- Home, where far more content is available here than previously, making it more of a launch pad into other areas of the app.
- My Forza section, where content that was buried 2-3 layers deep on Xbox One is now easily accessible right at the top level.
Results
The majority of the results for the Xbox One app are under NDA, but I can share that the app’s attachment rate was over 50%. Also, daily average time-on-franchise per user has increased by over 10 minutes per day.
The Windows 10 app was released to rave reviews by media and gamers alike! In the US Windows 10 App Store, Forza Hub has an average user rating of 4.9/5 stars. In addition to the great reception we received upon release, we've also seen many other Microsoft teams adopt our design patterns as platform standards, which confirms that the team's internal goal was achieved!
“…the new Forza Hub app is probably one of the most polished app experiences on Windows 10 that you can find. The user interface is wonderfully minimalistic and image-centric, evoking the image of the Xbox One dashboard, down to the black background and large tile interface.”
— WinBeta, the Windows 10 news and review site's recent review of Forza Hub
“Sean is one of the most customer-focused professionals I’ve had the pleasure of working with in over 25 years of software development. His commitment to a high quality user experience is always apparent throughout development, and is abundantly obvious in the final products he designs.
He also brings a fun and collaborative approach to brainstorming and prioritization, which helps the team and client truly understand what is most important to the success of a project. His ability to rapidly prototype multiple well-thought out solutions to problems, in addition to understanding and explaining technical requirements and dependencies, makes for a smooth, enjoyable experience for everyone working with him on a project, and for everyone who uses final product.”
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