Currently, the friend constellation:
Players who exceed 72 friends will still only see 72 friends at once. Those invisible friends still exist, but are unreachable in the moment.
The only alternative to meeting through luck is a player-found workaround: temporarily blocking friends to remove names and make space until the specific friend appears
Search Criteria:
Survey results showed all participants log on +3 times weekly, add 1-5 new friends weekly, and have played the game for anywhere between 9-14 months.
Summative Usability Testing
Each session started with 2 tasks:
Followed by a semi-structured interview:
Focused on previous behavior with making and finding friends as well as how users would want to find friends
And finished with a System Usability Scale Survey.
1. Affinity Diagram
Transcribed, grouped and coded user inputs & behavior
2. User Flow
Used user behaviors to detail every possible step and route of the current journey
3. System Usability Scale Survey
Exported to Google sheets and calculated manually
In fact, the constellation, though aesthetically pleasing, is disorganized and unintentionally causes users—especially those with larger friend lists—to lose contact against their wishes. User-found workarounds like favoriting, blocking, and adding emojis to friend names are not scalable and create unnecessary steps in the user journey
"Invisible" friends tend to be those a user has not contacted in a while. However, if a user decides to interact with one, there's no guaranteed way to do so—the user flow shows how users can easily fall into a cumbersome cycle of searching and/or blocking others. Success isn't guaranteed for those experienced with the blocking tactic, either. As a result, the average SUS score regarding users' experiences with the friend constellation is below what's desired. Each user's SUS score correlated with how much they struggled with Task 1.
Users proposed the constellation could show all their friends or have an all encompassing list paired with filter functions. Some users wanted to view friends by most recently online to either see who's online or to block inactive players to make space--I interpreted this to mean players want organization. However, if the goal is to address this study's issues, a search feature would have prevented any of the user anecdotes above where users could not find a specific friend they wanted to contact. See my prototype below.
Further research should be conducted on a "remove friend" feature and organizational tools for the friend constellation.
I created a new magnifying glass icon for the friend constellation in the top right corner. Clicking it opens a search bar that appears over the same background as the friend constellation.
As the user types, the screen displays friend names that start with what's typed. If there is a large amount of friends that begin with the same letters, you can tap the space outside the search bar and browse among the 5 screens. Beyond this prototype, there should be a loading indicator, and clicking on a friend should open up the interaction menu like the original constellation.
Now imagine this scenario: my old friend Mona messaged me on Discord asking to catch up through Sky, but because I have a large friends list and haven't played with her in months, I don't see her name. However, with my prototype, we can easily find each other. My prototype acts as a simple solution to a specific, but frustrating problem while staying consistent with Sky's current design and style.