The story of Balconies
Project Brief
The task is to design the long-awaited balconies in The Sims Mobile Game.
Role
As a UX Designer, collaborate with fellow Game Designers to envision the feature, curate the experience, create the flow and prototypes, and oversee the process from playtest to shipping.
Meet Martha. She looks unhappy, right? I'll tell you why. She has been playing TSM for a long time and has built a replica of her house in the game. However, she is unable to install the balcony, where she spends most of her time in the home these days. Martha is aware of a glitch in the game that can help her build the balcony. She tried but failed due to the complicated process. She feels disappointed and wishes she could complete her house by adding the balcony.
There were players' pain points and business needs.
The balcony has been the most demanded feature in SIMS Mobile history. Players have been asking for it in various player interactions and online forums for a long time.
The players were creating balconies using a glitch in the game, and it was painful to see. They had to go through all sorts of circus-like manoeuvres and hundreds of steps to create the ugliest-looking balcony. I tried using that glitch to build a balcony myself and realized the level of frustration they must be feeling.
A useful but frustrating glitch
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The Sims Mobile is a house-building and simulation game. For some reason, there were ways to build houses but not balconies. This missing feature has been the most requested by players for the past many years. Players had made a quirky way of using a glitch in the game to create balconies, which was frustrating to watch.
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Monetizing the balconies presented a significant opportunity, and since the game has come under our studio, we wanted a bold approach and take the challenge.
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However, there were significant technical constraints. The game had recently transitioned to our studio from a different studio, and implementing balconies would need to touch the core code base. Its a live wire for the new team.
Primary Research
To validate the requirements and scope, I always conduct primary UX research to validate or support the hypotheses we build for the project. The extent of the research can be quick or thorough, depending on the overall scope. For this project, I divided the research into three pillars.
1. Players Research
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Conduct CI tests (There is a team dedicated to CI tests).
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Perform desk study and comb through community groups (such as social media comments, blogs, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube).
2. System Study
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Understand the existing UX flows related to building and creating house items.
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Speak with other team members and consider production and tech constraints.
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Analyze similar features in other games.
3. Business Understanding
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Understand branding and packaging of house-building items within the game, as well as the economy related to house-building and items.
I started working on the primary research and gathering the documents etc.
But wait what???
Did we already have the solution all the time? A solution from a dead chest emerged
It all was explored two years ago. The previous design team had worked on balconies, and all pre-pod documents were prepared. The production team was happy that it would cut 40% in pre-pod time.
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It had Template balconies (The concept had been a super-hit for the House Template)
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Template Balconies are the least effort-requiring approach and mostly do not require recurring costs (extremely lucrative to the PMs and Producers)
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Our designers can come up with multiple creative designs of the balconies templates and create a desirable brand for the balconies.
I was also happy that my work would be easier to some extent. I gathered all the documents related to the exploration but
quickly realised it was not going to ring well with the direction My early research {} was tawasng me. But what can be the problem?
Next week I dug deeper into the problem realised why I felt that way and prepared the case.
The outcome of the early UX Research
I had partially done the research and based on that came up with these findings:
Players Research
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CI Test result
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Desk Study & Community Group Combing result
System Study
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Tech is the core building block. Very risky to touch at multiple places.
There are players' mental models for two ways of an existing building or adding items in the house. 1. For the house items, big furniture, big decorative additions, etc. 2. For the Wall and roof building.
Business Understanding
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It's easier to monetise the first approach where it is packaged like attachments or decorative items.
I dug deeper into the problem with the insights of UX research and found out why I felt that way.
The problem was fundamental; the arguments in favour of balconies were similar to the Pre Build House Template and were right but were not going to work similarly here.
There was a fundamental problem with motivation and goals
People take pride in imagining, building and sharing detailed designs; they don't always prefer a pre-built setup.
People feel satisfaction from constructing and showcasing their creations. It's a core pillar of the game. Providing them with a template balcony might constrain their creativity.
We cannot think of the limit of the player's imagination.
All the unique designs we see being popular and appreciated on the community blogs and posts are surprising. Our team will not be able to deliver those variations in the limited time constraints.
One shoe does not fit all
Everyone has a home and they have already spent 100s of hours in their home design. The templates will not fit in all the already built homes, we will have to give maximum flexibility so that the players can use that to build balconies in their existing homes. We can’t expect them to make changes in their homes due to the constrain of the templates
🤔 So it is a big dilemma...which way to go?
Allow the players to build their balcony from scratch with building materials.
Give them prebuilt options of the balconies which can fit their houses
It kind of made sense to everyone but multiple arguments and to and fro happened before all the stakeholders could come to the same page. Eventually, everyone agreed that prebuilt balconies might not be the correct way to go.
I decided to go back to the planning room and this time create a strategy, structure and process for the design as this seemed to be a unique challenge with high stakes and would require creative solutions.
UX Design Process
I used to start with either design thinking, double diamond, JJ Garette or any other design process. But over time I realised that a better approach could be a customised design process based upon the unique challenge at hand. For this task which had unclear conflicting vision, constraints of prototyping and tech challenges. I came up with a custom 5-step process.
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Requirements 2. Challenges 3. Explorations 4. Iteration and Feedback Cycle on the builds 5. Finalisation
1. Requirement
We narrowed down the requirements into 2 parts: for players and business.
Players: It should be aspiring, easy to understand, fast to install, highly customisable, and aligned to existing knowledge and mental models.
Business: To resolve the goal of the feature: It is a dilemma. We had two goals: first, make something players will buy and second, make money from it. We wanted to add balconies for everyone while also making some money.
2. Challenges
Few UX and Interaction Challenges we identified.
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Too many variables in the balconies to handle in a single flow - Floor size, wall - no wall, barrier style, Roof - no roof, each interior exterior wall, will be having wall textures. The variables for the customisation (Dimension, walls, Railing bars, Floor, ) are going to increase and so are the steps taken to complete them.
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Interaction - Get what you see - The live preview of the building balconies.
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Time taken to create the balconies - The room-building process is the threshold. Adding 1 more extra second or step is going to add frustration exponentially.
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3D challenges - Interactions and view in 3D
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Affordance of the wall or no wall interactions.
Solving the 3D interaction problem with previous experience of 3D design software
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Experience Delight and Feedback mechanism- Appointments, haptics, sound with tap
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Edge cases with the errors, error handling
3. Explorations and solutions
We prioritised the Core direction to prioritize for finalisation. How do we want to solve the Monetisation and Pre-builds vs Customisation problem and flow?
This will unblock other departments to start their work and explorations.
We explored and brainstormed many UX Flows and ideas and came up with a solution which seemed to solve the problem. In this solution, we decided to start with Prebuilt balconies only but with further placement and customisation will be closer to room building and customisation.
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Once the major problem was solved we were able to solve it for the payers and builders and monetisation was cracked as well. The leadership was aligned with the vision.
The next step was to create efficient flows and intuitive interactions for the players to be able to build balconies for their houses.
I created all use cases for balconies, grouped them and created a 3-step process to complete all the use cases.
We identified all the possible variables and actions on to build the balcony
Divided the actions in 4 steps to complete the balcony building
STEP 1 -Position and Resize
Once the desired balconies are picked from the basic template, the next step is to position that at the desired location on the house and rotate and resize to fit the location
STEP 2 - Barrier Design
The next step was to configure the side walls and then add the desired barrier style to the configuration. It was done in the below two sections.
Wall, no wall or barrier can be configured from the side wall card. And further, a barrier style can be chosen from the given barrier's card and applied. Then the roof can be chosen.
STEP 3- 4 - Sidewall and roof
The next step was to configure the side walls and then add the desired barrier style to the configuration. It was done in the below two sections.
Finalising the interior exterior style and wallpaper etc on the side walls
I created task flows and created a low-fidelity mockup to check the usability and find out the edge cases whole balcony application process.
Out of these two, I detailed one of these to feel and get the sense of players journey
All stars seemed to align.....
BUT
🚨 ONE MORE BIG BLOCKER AFTER THIS ALL EFFORTS...
In the internal testing of rough prototypes, we found out very early its own set of UX problems, as the variables for customisation (dimensions, walls, railing bars, floor, etc.) increased, so did the number of steps required to complete them.
Although the flow seems to be correct, covering all the use cases with usability and functionality in place. However, the player journey revealed that this multi-step process had a few major flaws.
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Too long: a process of three steps was becoming a tiring and broken experience.
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Liner steps for completing: players do not build in a linear fashion
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Once players start building they should remain in the flow state like playing a game itself.
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If players want to make some changes, they will have to go through the long steps again.
EXPLORATION...again?
"I know it's tiring to go through these lengthy solutions that were eventually changed, but the design process is like that. This is how the journey of the balcony unfolded, and I wanted to take you through the entire process. It's all about finding the best solutions for the players within a given timeframe."
After several more rounds of improvements and burning the midnight oil, we found the solution. We aimed for players to have maximum configuration options right from the start. We identified a few in-game solutions and designed them accordingly.
Furthermore, I structured the entire flow step-by-step to ensure it wouldn't become tedious or frustrating for players, allowing for crucial decisions at key moments. The IA was also designed in such a manner that all balcony-related features and items are logically interconnected, aligning with players' existing knowledge and mental models.
Our Heros
Wall/Resize toggle
It reduces the whole first building flow by 50% and rebuilding by 70%.
Now once the player starts building the balcony, they will be able to Resize, Rotate, and Wall configuration in one go and then place it. We further improved the iconography and improved the affordance.
Apply all for walls
Now all the walls side toggle and Barrier application can happen in one tap instead of going back and applying each individually.
Roof apply switch
We reduced one complete flow of going back and adding the roof. It can be done in the RESIZING MODE while resizing the floor dimensions of the balcony
Roof Toggle
By adding the roof toggle button, we removed one complete flow of going back and adding the roof. It can be done in the Resizing mode while resizing the floor dimensions.
All / Single and Wall Toggle
Toggle mode enables players to switch between Resize Mode and Wall Change mode. At this step, players can choose to apply changes to a single wall type or all wall types. This significantly reduces the back-and-forth time for players. They can remain on the same interface and continue customizing the walls and balcony barriers until they achieve the desired result.
"This solved the problems related to the flow and the user journey. We internally tested it with the team. Multiple back-and-forth use cases and edge cases were resolved and things were looking much better after the 3 interactive buttons.
We further solved unique challenges which are worth mentioning ."
Unique challenges
We had cracked the flow, user journey and the 2D part of the problem, but this flow had interactions in space 3D and the affordance of the iconography.
Conventional UX design is full of 2D interactions, this challenge had requirements of interactions and navigations in a 3D environment. Even the prototyping apps like Figma and XD did not have any provision for adding or showing 3D elements on the interface. for showing the ideas and mockups to the team I solved that by drawing and painting over the UI on iPad and even used the basic 2D elements to give a feel of 3D objects.
For placing the white arrows on the wall, that grey border was the first obvious choise. But realised that it would not be visible from the wall side view. Stretched the Cage and placed it on top of it.
The interactive elements had to be carefully considered, ensuring they were visible and interactive from every possible angle within the 3D space. This was crucial so that players wouldn't be confused by partial views from any angle or struggle to interact with them.
Designing interactions in a 3D view presented a unique challenge. Traditional interaction design primarily occurs on 2D UI interfaces, and while we possess ample experience in creating flows, wireframes, and interactions in 2D, transitioning to a 3D environment introduced complexities. In this setting, various interactions such as resizing balconies, placement adjustments, and multiple customization methods needed to be executed in a non-linear 3D space.
For instance, placing the resizing arrow for the wall on the grey border seemed like the most straightforward choice initially. However, this positioning would have made it invisible from the wall's perspective. We encountered numerous similar challenges. Since our UX prototypes weren't 3D and couldn't be explored or tested by rotating in space, we heavily depended on our spatial visualization skills. Fortunately, our prior extensive experience with 3D modeling software like Autodesk 3Ds Max and Unreal Engine proved invaluable in addressing these challenges.
The final step was to make sure the vision was built as per the mockups. We kept the feedback and changes cycle very short and agile.
The devil is in the details. Small things have the biggest impact and are easier to miss.
We had decided to get the team started to build a very raw Tech prototype in parallel to UX Interactive prototype as it was a 3D interaction-based project where not all possibilities could be shown on UX Prototyping tools and with the heavy constraints from the tech side it was important to keep syncing a being on the same page all the time.
And finally, after the cycles of feedback on the build and with FTUE, our final build is ready to ship. The amazing marketing team had created the buzz. The excitement in the community and buildup was on the roof !!!!
But....I will not be there with team to see the end of this story
Some words just come at a perfect moment to make you emotional.
Yes, I was moving from EA. Last 2 months of my notice period had tried my best to complete everything before I left. Even on my last day, I had given a few feedbacks on the latest build. It was a very emotional time for me as EA has been an experience to remember. I had worked passionately on Balconies and wanted to see the climax of the story but unfortunately couldn't happen that way.
Well, I moved from EA but kept waiting for the release date. As soon as the update was launched I checked the SIMS event stream on YouTube. It looked awesome.
I immediately checked the social media channels which we used to check for the player's sentiments.
Overwhelming responses from the players.
Twitter, Reddit and YouTube got flooded with the player's love and response. Quite an emotional moment for me and the only thing I was missing was the team. I know it would have been early Christmas in the office and people will be going crazy.
I started screenshots of the player's responses for some time and very soon realised they were coming as flood and I'll not be able to match the speed and stopped
I could see people celebrating the launch like a festival.
People who had stopped playing for a long had come back to be part of this euphoria. Everyone was playing with the new balcony and showering their love with their balcony builds and emotional comments. Engagement went crazy and broke all the records of previous launches. I quickly called one of the colleagues to see how it went and heard the kind of madness it had created and overshot all the expectations and projections we had estimated. It was worth the effort we had put in.
I'm sure that somewhere, in some corner of the world, there's a Martha, standing on her balcony with a smile, having recreated it in The Sims and completed her home.
That's how the story of Balconies which started with a glitch in the game, ended with the joy of tears of thousands of players from all around the world.
I kept taking screenshots for the next few days and felt the satisfaction of creating something which directly gave thousands of people their little moments of joy and satisfaction. I was also curious to know if whatever hypothesis we had about different elements and interactions is true or false, if there are some missed edge cases or what learning can be taken from this story and move to the next one...