Pokemon Go Chat
An UI Experiment
This week I was given the Challenge of adding a feature to an app and the chosen one was Pokemon Go. As a regular user of the game I always missed some sort chat feature to call friends to battle or exchange Pokemons.
I frequently use other platforms to communicate with my Pokemon friends, but there are some people that I play with that are not my friends IRL and I don't have ways to contact them.
The issue about this kind of chat is safety. There is wide array of players playing this game and since it's played outdoors, you already have to be concerned about many matters, and having your child or yourself being harassed by a completely stranger it's not rank on my top 5 concerns.
So I've chosen to create a chat with ready-made sentences, that not only prevent people from using the Pokemon Go chat for other purposes but also to avoid bullying.
The methodologies I applied in this work were: JTBD, Use Case, Lo-Fi Wireframe, Hi-Fi Wireframe, and Prototype.
So, the sentence of my "job to be done" is:
“When I’m trying to communicate some other pokemon player, I want to easily inform him or her about the action I am about to take, so we can perform it the fastest and most convenient way.”
Pokemon Go Design
My first step after validating the idea with some Pokemon Go users was to take a good look into UI elements. I tried to understand the patterns and the styles. Then, I sketched some lo-fi wireframes in my sketchbook. This step was very important for me to realize the solution that was in my head didn't match the style of the app at all. so I redrew it a few times until finally understood where my new feature would fit better.
This was very fun, and looking closely into an app I frequently use made me think about all the things that could be improved but I just accept and use regardless. Now my classmates and I have an internal joke that we will never see things the same way again, we are just doomed.
After some user tests and some insights from my mentors I spent some time making a hi-fi wireframe.
I used Adobe XD to make the wireframe and prototype it, I don't know how I feel about this tool yet, I was using Sketch and Figma in the past challenges and this time I decided to give XD a chance. It's harder to draw with it but in the end the prototype looks cooler ;).
Below are some of the screens that I've designed following the style of the app:
Road Map
For the Road Map of this feature I would try to add a delete button for messages that you send by mistake, a chat that you can use while playing, like in the middle of the battle or raid, and a Raid group chat that could use geolocation resources.
Final thoughts
This was the challenge of my 4th week of IronHack UX/UI Design bootcamp, I can see a good progress in my UX/UI skills and I am happy with the results. Of course I would change some things and maybe would try to make it again on Sketch or Figma, but for now it’s good enough!
This was the first individual exercise of the course and I missed spend time with people trying to figure it out how to make it better. On other hand it was a very enriching time, we could check how everybody was dealing with the issues by themselves, we helped each other and we got nice feedback!
Thank you! and remember to be alert at all times. Stay aware of your surroundings! Do not play Pokemon GO while driving.
