Halo Infinite Operations Case Study
Responsibilities:
UX Designer
A case study for the redesign of Halo Infinite's battle pass level-up system. Wrote up acceptance criteria, created wireframes and user flows and advocated for the update of related screens.
Project Description • Problem Statement • Reward Track Updates • User Flow • In-Game
Related Projects: Component Library • Settings Menu Heuristic Evaluation
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The Operations Level Skip System was a revision of the existing level-up system for Battle Passes. This redesign allows players to purchase experience to increase their Operation/Battle Pass' level through the reward track and boost menu.
PROBLEM STATEMENT & GOALS:
We wanted players to be able to purchase multiple level skips with minimal effort and/or number of clicks in a single transaction.
How were levels purchased before?
The old flow allowed for players to level up their equipped battle pass through the boosts menu. There, they could spend 200 Halo Credits to purchase one level at a time. If they would like to increase the tier again, they would have to go through the relatively long process of confirming this purchase, watching /skipping the rank-up animation and then returning to the boost menu to purchase another level over and over again
Player Experience Challenges
Buying more than one level at a time is tedious.
The rewards available after purchasing level skips are not immediately obvious from the boost menu.
Players must keep track of the number level skips they need to purchase to achieve/obtain their target level/rewards.
Players must keep track of the total credits they need to purchase to achieve/obtain their target level/rewards.
Purchasing level skips with XP Grants must be easy-to-do and cost-effective.
Business & Development Challenges
The repetitiveness of purchasing multiple level skips might deter players from completing large transactions. For every purchase, players must click through four screens to complete their transaction and have two chances to back out of their purchase.
Design Challenges
If a player wishes to purchase N level skips, they must repeat the process for purchasing a level skip N times and click through 4N screens.
While purchasing level skips, players cannot see the reward track and the items they will collect.
Business Goals
Encourage players to purchase level skips.
Make purchasing level skips more enticing to players by putting rewards at the forefront of the flow.
Increase the operation tier skip purchase rate.
Player Experience Goals
Efficiency: Allow players to purchase greater amounts of level skips with fewer clicks.
Reward-focused: Enable players to purchase several levels based on the reward(s) they desire while reducing the focus on the credits they will spend to acquire said reward(s).
Reduced cognitive load: Show players the total cost of their transaction.
UPDATES:
How Players Level Up Using the Reward Track
When a player selects an item on the reward track, they can add some multiple of 1000 experience points to their operation so that the rewards at the selected level are unlocked. Upon selecting an unowned item, the "Level Up" option is made visible on the helpbar and after a second click, pressing the A button or hitting Enter will trigger the Level Up pop up to appear.
For premium Battle Passes, the following pop-up is shown:
For players who have not yet purchased their operation, only the free rewards up through the level of the selected item will be unlocked for them even if a premium item is selected. If a free operation is later upgraded, all of the premium rewards that weren't previously collected are unlocked. Players are provided the option to upgrade their free operation when they confirm their level-up purchase.
Owned Rewards
When a user selects a reward they’ve already collected, the option to level up is not available to them and is not visible on the helpbar.
Purchase Bonuses on Live Operations
The level up option is also hidden and disabled when a purchase bonus is selected whether or not the operation is owned.
Other changes:
Added the Halo Credit balance to the reward screen.
Moved Double XP Boosts timer closer to XP amount.
Removed the Boost option from the reward screen when the operation is not equipped.
Level Up Pop-Up Revisions
Because it was not feasible to append the cost of the level-up transaction on the pop-up list items, I came up with alternative designs. Below were the other design ideas:
Inline Cost: The transaction cost could be placed inline with the pop-up's paragraph at the very beginning.
Boost Menu Styling: Another design involves the cost of the transaction being styled like the level-up cost on the boost menu (shown below the second pop-up).