About Nix Hydra
Creators of The Arcana and EGG! mobile games and located in Los Angeles US, Nix Hydra is a mobile game studio with a portfolio of games and apps that are enjoyed by over 23 million people worldwide.
The project
This project was handled by Globant, my employer at the moment. I was part of a multidisciplinary team.
My role
As the project's Product Owner, my primary goal was to represent the client's vision to the development team. To achieve that, I had to constantly communicate with Nix Hydra and keep track of the client's feedback and expectations. I also managed and made visible the product roadmap and a prioritized list of features for product development.
As the User Experience Designer of the project, I had to run several strategic sessions and interviews with Nix Hydra to extract the client's goals and expectations and the final user needs, pain points, and ideas. That Discovery process was crucial to start the project with qualitative and quantitative data and the criteria to prioritize the upcoming work. During the development phase, I constantly searched user data to define the development team's requirements and provided deliverables with specifications for the UI design.
Problem to solve
The client needed an online tool that didn’t exist in the market. We needed to create an online tool for experienced and not-experienced story writers so they can write stories in a User Interface end that will translate into mobile games in the other building end.
We have to consider:
✓ User Interface for story writing
✓ Story and mobile game structure
✓ Coding languages and sub-languages
✓ Preview the game while writing
✓ Collaboration between writers
✓ Translation to Unity
✓ Story and mobile game structure
✓ Coding languages and sub-languages
✓ Preview the game while writing
✓ Collaboration between writers
✓ Translation to Unity
Process:
✓ Benchmark
✓ Mood board
✓ Wireframes
✓ Mockups
✓ Prototypes
✓ User tests
✓ Mood board
✓ Wireframes
✓ Mockups
✓ Prototypes
✓ User tests
UI Mockups
Every content creator could create several stories that will become playable visual stories in the mobile app. To make this process easy, we created a collection that can be managed.
For every story, there are a lot of branching possibilities, like character routes, decision paths, etc. We made a lot of user research to make this process easy to follow.
We aimed for a direct translation to Unity with all the animation and interaction possibilities the engine allows. To achieve this, we translated very complex processes into an easy-to-follow user interface.
We even opened the possibility to modify the user interface the player will see on their mobile phone.
With preview and flowchart panels, validations, and code helpers, we wanted to create a writing experience that would feel natural for content creators.
High-Fidelity Prototypes
Real-time code review: Considering the vast potential and power of this tool, we enhanced the code editor with a Live Preview, code review and validations, variables, and much more.
Complex views: We allowed editors and writers to modify the views' layout. This enriched the possibilities when creating story branches and conditions.
Assets gallery: Every writer and editor could save and reuse assets. We added transition effects when changing backgrounds, animations for characters and assets, and much more.
Results
We created a powerful custom mobile game creation tool with features and collaboration possibilities that didn't exist in the market before.
This tool allowed Nix Hydra to take a big step ahead of competitors and move forward on their business goals.
