Bing Search Experience for Gamers
OVERVIEW
Bing search experience for avid gamers and general users making gaming-related searches. Bing aims to deliver the best search experience in the gaming domain. The project objective is to focus on Bing’s answers for digital gaming.
As part of the project the designer is expected to understand user search behaviour and interaction patterns.
Explore options for a deeper engagement with the Bing (e.g. rate, review, purchase and share)
Define new patterns and framework which are unique to Bing, that scales across to other domains and verticals
ROLE & DURATION
User Research, Interaction, Visual design, Prototyping & testing
June 2017 - Jan 2017
PROJECT TYPE
Internship Project
ORGANIZATION
THE CHALLENGE
No. of gamers is growing, there is no gaming-centric UX on search engines.
Users have to keep navigating into various result links to find what they need.
There exists a huge scope for UX tailored for gamers.
The gaming industry has increased by half a billion players in the past three years, totalling 2.7 billion people globally. The report predicts more than 400 million new gamers are expected by the end of 2023. As this industry raises the total number of searches made on Search engines also rises drastically. But at the moment the SERP of gaming-related searches is very generic. There is a scope of much better-designed Search Experience for gamers on these search engines. Bing aims to create a tailored search experience for these users.
THE METHOD
The ideation was mostly driven by comprehensive user research which aided in creating specific personas of the users. It also helped identify the gaps and opportunity areas.
Through secondary research and in-depth competitive analysis helped in understanding the current gaming ecosystem. It helped leverage the mental model to create a superior user experience, in which the user can focus on their task rather than on learning new models, as per Jakob’s Law.
What are the components of the gaming ecosystem and how does it work?
RESEARCH - SECONDARY
Extensive secondary research was conducted gathering information about various areas of gaming.
Topics covered in Secondary research:
Gaming Ecosystem
Platforms
Types/Genre
Users/Gamers
Gamer Demographics
Gamers’ online behaviour
Gaming media content
Competitive Study - YouTube Gaming, Twitch, Steam, Gamespot, Reddit
RESEARCH - PRIMARY
The primary research was conducted in two ways majorly.
Qualitative Interviews - Multiple gaming enthusiasts were interviewed with a set of questions aimed at understanding their online behaviour. These interview questions were designed to target some specific areas. These topics were:
What kind of information does the user look for online?
What are the various sources of getting this information?
The process and ways of finding this information.
Identifying the pain points, opportunities areas.
Observation - A task designed to understand the users’ journey on a search engine. The task was “If you found out about a new game releasing soon, how would you find out more about it on the internet?“ All the users were given this task and were asked to think aloud while they were looking for answers on a search engine. Their screens were recorded during this whole process and questions were asked about their actions. This helped identify gaps in the research process and also a lot of areas of opportunity.
INSIGHTS
What are gaming enthusiasts saying today?
After extensive secondary research, primary research with task observation and interviews with multiple gamers of all kinds (hardcore gamers, midcore gamers and gaming followers) a lot of valuable insights were collected. Here are the top insights from the research.
1. Gamers prefer video content over text content.
Gamers prefer watching videos about most of the topics rather than extensive reading. It is much easier to consume and understand with context to the game. There are a lot of categories of gaming video content available online like walkthroughs, reviews, cheats, tricks, etc.
3. Gaming community loves to connect & share but mostly within the community.
A lot of gamers might seem disconnected or uninterested in the outside world. But they love to connect internally. They share scores, leader-boards, game reviews, wins or losses, tips and tricks. They play games together, stream gameplays to other gamers/watchers.
5. Hardcore gamers need in-depth information of one game, midcore gamers prefer an overview of multiple games.
When playing a game, hardcore gamers might look for in-depth information that game. Whereas midcore and casual gamers might be more interested in finding overview information about many games.
2. Hardcore gamers are the target users, casual gamers rarely make online searches.
Hardcore gamers are the ones who mostly go online looking for information related to gaming. Casual gamers, on the other hand, barely ever take gaming so seriously to go online researching on a search engine.
4. Less search, more information is preferred
Accessibility to all kinds of information is very important. They do not mind information overload. They can identify information which important or required at the moment. But they would prefer not to search long threads or multiple click journeys for one piece.
6. Discussion forums are a point of interest.
A lot of gamers rely on discussion forums like Reddit, Steam community, Discord for finding information about games.
PERSONAE
After primary & secondary research, three personas were created.
Hardcore Gamer - Professional, streamer, listed in-game leaderboards.
Midcore Gamer - Aspiring gamer, enthusiast, experimenter.
Casual Gamer - Occasional gamer, rarely goes online.
Casual gamers are not the target audience as they rarely ever go online to make a gaming search.
USER JOURNEY & TASK ANALYSIS
How do I design an experience which accommodates all major gaming information in an organised manner and also works for hardcore and midcore gamers?
THE CONCEPT & IDEAS
Understanding Search String Pattern > Identifying Keywords > Organizing keywords > Answers with similar keywords
To remove the irrelevant content from the answers page, the intent of the user is to be understood first. It is very important to understand what the user is looking for and provide him with only relevant content. Any information other than the one asked for can be called irrelevant and is clutter.
After the research, a list of the most common gaming keywords was made. This list was than sorted and grouped according to relatability. If the answers provided were according to those groups, the clutter information could be avoided.
The concept is that every time a search query is made on a search engine, the query can be analysed by the type of keyword used in the query. It can be found that from which group of keywords the query has been made and all the ALGO links that are given to the user can be from the same group of information.
The keyword determines the group from which the query has been made. All the ALGO results that are presented on the Answers page should be from the same group of topics. This will reduce the irrelevant information and increase the amount of relevant content on the Results page. When this is done, all the answers will be from the same related group. So if the user is interested in level 1information about a game, all the links on the answers page will be from the same page.
FINAL DESIGN
THE GO-BIG EXPERIENCE
An immersive experience that gives the user a gaming feel with all the relevant information organised and upfront for them. It saves the user from navigating into different links and provides relevant information in the same space. Users also get a video answers carousel where related videos can be watched without going anywhere else.
This experience works for both types of gamers where they are looking for overview information of a game. This type of result gives a good understanding of the various topics inside a game. Also in the Go-big experience, the user can be given a lot of answers in a very organised way without creating any clutter.
Top Tabs: Related topics in the game
Information area: This area displays the information about the tab that is open. And reviews of the game.
Links: If there is a requirement, links to various platforms can be given in this area.
Bottom Tabs row: The second row contains tabs of various video topics
Video Carousel: The bottom row has a carousel of the videos which are selected in the above options.
EXPERIMENTAL IDEA
What if Bing video vertical was not Bing, it gave gamers a whole new gaming video experience?
BING GAMING - A FUTURISTIC ALL NEW VIDEO VERTICAL OF BING
In a new and futuristic concept, Bing was imagined as a new video-based search engine. Which provided the user with all video answers. Also, the experience would be a complete gaming website and will host all kinds of gaming videos like manufacturer content, user content, live videos, gaming channels, promotional videos, tournament videos etc.
This all new gaming video vertical would be exclusive for gamers and will host all kinds of video related to gaming.
BING GAMING
Bing gaming is a completely new and futuristic video vertical that is a part of the Bing search engine but is exclusive for gamers only. This gaming vertical opens up when the query is related to gaming and the user click on the video vertical on Bing.
The top carousel gives the user several videos on a carousel. These videos may be basic video of the game and may include trailer and gameplay.
The second carousel will contain the current popular videos of the game and may include all kinds of videos like trailer, gameplay etc. This carousel may also contain tournament and release event videos.
The Third carousel contains all the currently going on live videos of the game from the famous gamer of the game.
The fourth carousel contains the names of different channels of the game. These channels include links to gaming channels videos of different games or content creators.
In the reviews carousel the user may find review videos of the game from the different gaming reviewers
Official carousel the user may find officially released promos or trailer or gameplay videos of the game. Here the user may also find videos that are released by the manufacturer during the release even of the video.
REFLECTIONS
The duration of this project was six months but the learnings went much above & beyond this duration. While the initial focus was just to design an experience for gamers, by the end there were so many innovative and experimental ideas in my mind. As this was my first project fresh after design school, I learned how ideas turn into reality in a corporate environment as big as Microsoft. I learned how in real-life, one has to work within the constraints. The responsibility behind taking a decision which has the potential to affect the users globally.
This experience was enriched by constant guidance of my mentor, fellow interns, monthly reviews with the entire Microsoft design team, and biggest of all, getting to be an active contributor in the entire development process, right from the ideation phase up to the communication of the exact UI and UX requirements.
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