Call of Duty - Recharge Bunker
A mental wellness system for First Person Shooting (FPS) games.
Research: Survey, Indirect Observation, Literature Review, Usability Study
Duration
Sep - Dec 2021 (10 weeks)
My Role Team
UX Researcher Emily Motlong, Gresshaa Mehta
Project Overview
The Recharge Bunker is a mental wellness system designed to be incorporated into the Call of Duty video game. It aims to help players relieve In-game stress in between shooting matches. As the UX Researcher for this project, I used a Literature Review, Survey, and Indirect Observation during the discovery phase of research to help us understand the problem space and fuel ideation for the UX Designer. I also conducted a small scale Usability Study to identify prototype issues.
Context + Challenge
One of the biggest challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic has been maintaining proper mental health. Many people turned to online gaming as a way to stay connected with their communities. Initially our research question was about how any type of gaming could promote mental wellness.
However, while doing research in this space, we noticed that gamers were often stressed out while playing FPS games, especially Call of Duty, so we wanted to develop a solution to relieve in-game stress and make a positive impact on gamers' mental health. The overarching question was how could we design wellness practices into FPS games that aren't intrusive for the players and give them an incentive to engage?
Research
To understand the problem space of how we could use games to promote mental health, I developed some research questions to guide initial research.
Research Questions
1. What kinds of gaming experiences bring people joy?
2. What practices help people reduce their stress and anxiety?
Methods
Literature Review - 10 papers
Survey - 18 responses
Indirect Observation - 5 streaming videos
Literature Review
There was a lot of published literature and articles about gaming and mental health, and doing a secondary research to start would help us obtain a general understanding of the topics, think about target users, and help shape the survey questions.
Survey
Using a survey provided context about people's gaming practices and mental health status, and it helped us understand their favorite games and what they enjoy most about gaming. Additionally, a survey was a convenient and safe way to collect a large amount of information during a pandemic and a quick option to help support our 10-week project timeline.
Indirect Observation
Finally, to answer “how gaming can alleviate stress for people”, we needed to understand the behaviors that people exhibited while playing games, what behaviors showed stress and what parts of gameplay showed people relieving their stress or enjoying certain parts of a game, so I decided to use indirect observation to watch streamers play video games. We each chose video games from a different genres, and varied the gameplay with individual and group.
Participant Criteria
Because our survey was about gaming and mental health with a focus on the pandemic, we screened for participants based on the following criteria:
1. Someone who plays games - Can be novice, experienced, PC, console, etc.
2. Stressed and anxious people - People who have experienced psychological risks.
3. People who live in the U.S. - We want to focus on people in this area because many of the participants that we plan to send the survey to live in the U.S.
4. People who started gaming or increased gaming during the pandemic.
Insights
There were a few key themes that emerged from our secondary research:
1. The majority of gamers increased their time spent gaming since the pandemic began. Very different types of games provided an escape for different people. For example Call of Duty: Warzone and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, were both very popular at the beginning of the pandemic. Gamers enjoyed the comfort from escapism that these games provided.
2. FPS games can cause stress. While watching people play FPS games, you could see the stress - shoulders hunched, intense staring and you could also hear them talking to each other about how stressed they were.
3. Gamers turned to streamers for connection and comfort. For some gamers, this was their only connection to the outside world during stay at home orders. Isolation was an increasing problem and this connection to streamers was very important to some gamers as a life line.
Survey Insights
From our research, we developed a better sense of different types of gamers, and narrowed down our topic to how we could design a mental wellness system in an existing FPS game because we noticed from our surveys and indirect observation that people liked playing FPS games like call of duty but experienced in-game stress.
Personas
Based on the research, I created these personas to capture potential user needs and frustrations.
Design Requirements
From the research insights, we worked with the designer to generate a list of requirements that we felt the system should have.
The solution should...
1. Make users feel relaxed and remind them to take a break
2. Be gamified.
3. Be incorporated seamlessly Into the playing experience.
4. Not feel like a burden and turn users away from practicing mindfulness.
5. Help gamers of all levels.
Ideation
As a group, we brainstormed ideas of bringing mental wellness in between game matches.
User Flows
For the sake of time, we decided to focus on the Occasional Gamer user type, and I created a user flow to understand potential use cases.
Prototype
Seamless In-game Experience
The Recharge Bunker is placed in the call of duty menu as another option. We wanted to make it look like another feature in the game
Recharge Bunker Bounty
Shows a list of Bounties that users can choose to complete. Each bounty has a time limit that encourages users to play. When clicking on a bounty, the bounty tasks on the bottom right corner populate.
Custom Locations
Provide custom locations for users, so can they relax in different environments.
Bounty Tasks
Tasks are listed based on the type of Bounty chosen. Each task is a mini game or wellness activity that rewards users with XP based on completion.
In-game Wellness activity + Mini Games
Mini games provide gamers a chance to try something new in a familiar environment. This gave us an opportunity to introduce a wellness practice into the game without altering the storylines of the long standing franchise.
Usability Testing
I conducted usability tests with 3 of the Survey participants who noted playing FPS games. The usability study aimed to test the navigation and identify any other usability issues. I asked the participants to complete the following tasks:
1. Choose recharge bunker bounty from your objective panel
2. Find time left to win a particular bounty
3. Choose a location to complete the bounty tasks
4. Choose a task to complete within one bounty location
5. Identify your bounty progress
Iterations
Prototype Issues + FIXES
Problem #1
3/3 testers didn't understand the features on the Recharge Bunker.
Description
There was not much information about features on the system to first time users.
Solution
Provide a quick recharge bunker tutorial for first time users to explain its key features.
Problem #2
3/3 testers didn't know when they received a reward.
Description
There was no indication of a reward when completing tasks.
Solution
Provide a notification to notify users when they have received rewards for using the “Recharge Bunker”.
Final Prototype