WarpTime
WarpTime was a project I build or organizing Warhammer 40k tournaments to help fill a gap I discovered when I joined the community.
Problem
The problem I encountered when I entered my first online Warhammer 40k (40k) tournament was that the organization site, Best Coast Pairings (BCP), was very messily put together, with the functions split across 2 apps and the site (with some functions requiring you to not be logged in), and the account often not linking across platforms.
Role
As the sole designer, I filled all roles, including the research, liaison with the client, building the wireframe and prototype, designing the branding.
Audience
The audience for this project was people seeking to run or enter 40k tournaments.
Solution
The solution I came to was building a single site that can accomplish all the tasks for organizing and taking part in a tournament.
Tools Used
In this project, I made use of Figma, Figjam, Google Forms, Discord, IRC, Maze, Miro, Adobe Color, and Looka.
Competitive Analysis
I started by looking into BCP again to examine. The site was crowded by advertisements for the app, the events page consistently failed to load, logging in stopped me from registering for a tournament, and the app refused to allow me to sign in with the username and password I set up on the site.
User Stories
As a user, I want to find tournaments easily so I can register for ones that match my schedule
As a user, I want to view my opponent so I can contact them
As an organizer, I want to be able to quickly update the matches so I can keep the tournament moving
As a user, I want to view my opponent’s list so I can make plans for the game
As an organizer, I want the site to be simple to use to reduce the load on competitors
Personas
Pain Points
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Sites are unintuitive
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Split across multiple apps
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Requires mix of being signed in and being signed out
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Doesn't show enrolled tournaments
User Flow and Site Map
Wireframe and Initial Usability Testing
The initial wireframe kept simplicity, but ran into a number of issues in the initial testing. Many of the connections were unintuitive or unclear to the users, resulting in some redesign of the format and flow.
Mood Board and Style Tile
My styling ideas were inspired by previous experiences with gaming related sites. The Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 SRD has a very nice background to it that contrasts well with the text and gives a pleasant visual texture. Meanwhile, the name I had chosen, "WarpTime", is actually a magic power from the game, and magic in 40k is associated with the bright green fire from the lower picture, as demonstrated by the logo of Warpfire Minis. I put together that brown and green into Adobe Color to generate a color palette that I liked, though for contrast I needed to end up adjusting the shades a little.
Final Prototype and Thoughts
There are a lot of future steps that could be taken that I noticed during the creation and left out due to scope creep. The major two that I noticed from my research are integration of payment, both for tournament fees and prizes, as well as the development of a companion app.
Payment processing was something that would be great to add, but was well outside of the scheduling of organization. Meanwhile, the problem with the companion app was that I wanted to first build a fully functioning site, and then expand into an app from there, since the biggest problem that was present in the competition was having the functionality split across multiple apps.
