SQ Community
A refreshing and engaging area for users to connect, share and discover more of the apps they love
SideQuest Communities
Role
UX/UI designer
Team
UX/UI designer & User researcher
About the project
SideQuest Communities
SideQuestVR started as a community of developers who love all things VR and wanted a place to connect and help each other build and design great apps! The whole of the company was based on the idea of indie devs sharing and helping each other. In recent years they community has dwindled and has become an area of inactivity and neglect
The Problem
Sidequest communities are empty
Returning SQ users lack motivation to participate in our communities. There are stagnant spaces, lack of responses and unanswered community posts
The Challenge
Engagement and Discovery
We needed to find a way to get active community engagements and increase app and community discoverability without adding to much extra work for our teams.
The Solution
User activity driven content
Using moderators and AI tools to create stimulating conversation and content discovery based on user driven activity communities can thrive and become a bustling hub for users to enjoy and participate
Discover
User interviews & insights
Why are users not using the community area? Working with my colleagues, user researchers Ceelie Fox and John McKerchar we concentrated on finding out what would encourage user interaction, what discouraged it, what users actually need and how competitors might address these questions. Other topics like trolling, privacy and direct developer communication would be another set of things to learn.
Define
Problems identified
01
Lack of response
When users post or engage with discussions but receive little to no interaction, they feel ignored or that their contributions don’t matter. This leads to a drop in community activity
02
Boring Content
Admins struggle to find interesting content to talk about. Discussions, posts and events fail to capture users’ interest, and users lose interest and don’t see a reason to return
03
Inactive admins
Admins play a crucial role in setting the tone and keeping conversations active. When spaces are neglected they can become stagnant.
04
Negative engagements
Users were worried about getting trolled or abused by other users when posting and commenting. This lead to them lurking rather than participating
Define
How might we, what if's and quick wins
Using the pain-points and user needs collected from user and stake holder interviews we ran a series of workshops using How Might We’, What if statements and brainstorming to come up with different possible solutions to the issues uncovered. The goal being to ideate quickly, align business objectives with user needs and agree on which direction to move forward with.
Armed with the research findings and assumptions I set up a How might we workshop with various stakeholders to come up with lot of varied statements
Once we had narrowed down the best HMW statements we came up with a range of solutions
I used various pain-points and notes from the user interviews to answer design questions and come up with some potential easy fixes to improve the experience
The plan was to find easy fixes that didn’t require much development to patch our dead communities up while the bigger project was in progress
Develop
Flows and lo-fi wireframes
Moving forward with the chosen direction, lo-fi wireframes and flows were created. Design decisions were based on the research and data collected to ensure the main problems were addressed
Activity driven content to aid discovery and keep users interested. AI and moderated post prompts
Creating interesting posts and topics using community members browsing habits and downloads is an easy way to ensure relevant content is served. Also using polls and similar based content will keep the feed populated and interesting
Project Solution
Deliver
Hi fidelity designs
Hi fidelity designs were created to help testers and stake holders understand the final vision. Elements were implemented from the design system and a range of new components were also created.
Personalised Content
First visit to this area users would select communities from categories based of previous browsing and categories they are interested in to create a personalised content feed
Content discovery
The discovery tab is filled with apps, videos and other content based on user preferences and activity in the users communities
Content you care about
A customised feed with content pulled from communities you follow in one place will feel active and result in more user engagement
Events
Organised events pages with info on when, where and how. Also content related to previous and other related events
Prototype and testing
A fully working prototype was built and ready to be used for tests. After some successful initial internal testing a final user testing plan was discusses and created with the user research team. This was scheduled for mid March but is currently on hold while other testing takes priority.
Deliver
Improvements
Communities area
Categorised and suggested communities based on browsing and initial preferences makes browsing easier and less overwhelming.
01
Discovery area
Relevant apps, games and content is now easily discoverable and updated automatically based on community activity making the area feel fresh and current.
02
Personal feed
Users can now view content from joined communities without having to dig and search. They can also contribute and interact without fear of trolling or commitment. There is a wealth of interesting posts and features to encourage user engagement.
03
Individual communities
There is a suite of tools to help community admins with post ideas and community engagement. This should help the community to grow and combat stagnation.
04
User engagement
87
New Spaces
247
The Difference
The quick wins has increased user engagement without the need for developer resources
Learn MoreProject takeaways
Final notes
Talking to people
Initially I had pre-conceived ideas on how this project should turn out but after a lot of collaboration with the user research team and data from our users I realised how much I didn’t know. Seeing how much anxiety users had about posting and the negative reactions towards each other was a surprise to me. On a positive note it was really interesting to see how much users valued helping each other and enjoyed sharing content they found valuable with others.
Balancing tech with real humans
We had a range of ideas for ways to create engagements with users. From AI bots to administrators creating interesting posts. Mixing the two felt like a giant step in the right direction
Final thoughts
This project faced major challenges due to shifts in company direction, which required rethinking the approach and ultimately led to the major re-design part being put on hold. While the polish and designs didn’t reach the level I had hoped for or make it to development and release, I still see it as a great example of strong design thinking, user research, and UX collaboration—driven by real data.
