Duration
10 Weeks, 2024
What I Did
UI Design, Wireframing, Prototyping, Data Analysis, Usability Testing
Team
2 UIUX Designers,
1 Motion Designer
My Role
UIUX Designer
Overview
Redesigned the Steam mobile app to enhance player interaction by refining the UI, expanding social features, optimizing group functionality, and introducing tools such as voice chat and matchmaking, resulting in stronger community engagement and a more connected user experience across the platform.
Why It Matters
In today’s gaming ecosystem, players increasingly seek platforms that not only provide access to games but also facilitate vibrant social connections. Competitors like Discord and Xbox Live have set higher expectations for communication, collaboration, and community-building. If Steam fails to meet these needs, it risks losing user engagement and retention to more socially immersive platforms.
25%
Reducing error rate
15%
Reducing task duration
20%
Task success
Design Process
My Skillsets
Problem
Limited Social Functionality on Steam
The current social features on the Steam platform are underdeveloped, restricting meaningful player interaction and community engagement. This limitation reduces overall user experience and weakens the platform’s ability to foster long-term loyalty and attractiveness.
Solution
Design Solution: Enhancing Social Engagement on Steam
To address the limitations of Steam’s current social functionality, we redesigned the platform interface and introduced three new features aimed at strengthening community interaction, collaboration, and personalization.
1. Matchmaking for Social Play
We implemented a matchmaking system that allows players to connect with new friends and form teams based on shared interests or preferred game genres.
2. Game Rooms & Community Groups
Players can now create dedicated game rooms and discussion boards, where they can freely organize matches, share strategies, and build communities around specific titles.
3. Personalized Game Recommendations
The redesigned store page integrates social and data-driven insights by showing which games a user’s friends already own, alongside weekly personalized recommendations based on gameplay behavior.
Research, Define & Ideation
User Research
Voices from the Users
Conduct a comprehensive analysis of the gaming market and future value trends for players through media monitoring and in-depth desktop research. Additionally, examine the interaction patterns and objectives among key stakeholders to identify opportunities for enhanced engagement and collaboration.
Survey- 131 responses, Interview- 20 participants
Method01: Archetypes
Understand various user value
We implemented a matchmaking system that allows players to connect with new friends and form teams based on shared interests or preferred game genres.
Method02: Empathy Map/ Personas
Understand user value
Our primary research indicates that social interaction serves as a key motivator for many gamers; however, most express dissatisfaction with the social features currently available on gaming platforms. Specifically, players emphasize the need for reliable real-time voice communication during cooperative gameplay, accessible community spaces for exchanging strategies and engaging in discussion, and streamlined tools for forming teams with friends in competitive environments.
Method03: User Journey Map
Explore the user journey and pain points
Currently, mainstream gaming platforms offer game stores and plugin communities, but in-game voice systems and social networking systems lack many necessary mechanisms. This leads most players to choose other voice or social software to compensate for these deficiencies.
Stakeholders Research
Voices from the Stakeholders
we interviewed four industry experts to gather insights from stakeholders and internal perspectives, aiming to better understand the relationships among stakeholders. Based on the information collected, we created a stakeholder map and conducted a 2x2 analysis to evaluate each stakeholder’s influence and interest, supporting strategic planning and guiding potential directions for the project.
Expert Interview- 4 participants
Method01: Ecosystem Map
Understand the relationship
The ecosystem diagram reveals a growing social demand for games. Video platforms increasingly feature games as primary content, with influencers emerging as significant drivers of game popularity. Despite this trend, current gaming platforms still lack robust social features.
Method02: Stakeholders Map
Defining the stakeholders
Organizing secondary data into a stakeholder map highlighted the evolving structure of the gaming market. While game sales were historically concentrated on e-commerce platforms such as Steam, GOG, and Xbox, today the ecosystem extends to social platforms, where communities and advertising play a key role, and players increasingly discover games through content creators on social media.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Gap Identification
Applied Blue Ocean Strategy to analyze competitors across key features like interface, personalization, rewards, finding friends, chat features, live streaming, social community, and cross-platform sharing.
This analysis revealed gaps in rewards systems and social community where competitors underperformed, identifying clear opportunities to differentiate our product by improving these underdeveloped features and enhancing user experience.
Ideation
From Ideas to Actions
01 Data Analysis:
Synthesized and categorized insights from affinity mapping to identify core user pain points, needs, and behaviors.
02 Opportunity Identification:
Mapped out primary and secondary opportunities based on data, focusing on areas where impactful solutions could be developed.
03 Solution Generation:
Facilitated brainstorming sessions to create innovative solutions for each opportunity, ensuring alignment with user needs and business objectives. The Opportunity Solution Tree method helped prioritize the most promising ideas for implementation
Co-Creation Workshop- 5 participants
How Might We develop a gaming platform that fulfills the gamers' need for meaningful social interaction, allowing them to form connections and develop a sense of identity through the game?
Iterative Design and Prototyping
Prototyping
Wireframing
Iterative Design
Usability Testing
01 Testing Process
This testing aims to evaluate the work efficacy and convenience of users utilizing the social functions of a gaming platform on mobile. We want to observe and measure whether users understand the application, its value, and how to complete basic initial functions.
Task1: Community& Store
- View game information and discussions, and purchase games
Task2: Profile& Achievement
- Create a portfolio and add personal details
Task3: Matchmaking System
- Use the match-making function to find suitable friends to create a group with
02 Data Analysis and Testing Report
At this stage, we have analyzed and organized various response materials, cross-referenced and inferred the reasons. We have collected background interview responses, usability test data, and post-test interviews.
In the rainbow table (right-bottom), we found that customers had a lot of doubts about the operation of task 3. Customer background interviews revealed that most customers lacked previous experience with mission functionality, which may not correlate with their prior satisfaction. Therefore, we will modify the operation of task 3.
03 Rationale Behind This Direction
During the testing, while many participants showed keen interest in task3 content, there was no apparent link between task3 and overall satisfaction. Consequently, we decided to conduct a survey.
Analysis of the testing results revealed that although participants maintained a high level of interest, the longer task duration, higher error rate, and lack of familiarity with Task 3—matchmaking—posed challenges. This indicates that the matchmaking mechanism is not part of users’ prior experiences, and therefore requires clearer guidance and seamless integration into the user flow and sitemap.
Integrate community pages, personalized profiles, and matchmaking to strengthen social connections, align interests, and elevate the overall player experience on Steam — measured by increased friend connections 20%, higher community participation rates 30%.
User Flow
Refining User Flow and UI
Information Architecture
Refining Site Map
Final High-Fidelity Wireframe
Polished High‑Fidelity Design
Reflections
What I Learned…
Synthesized 3 usability testing sessions into prioritized themes and an insight report, leading to 5 key design decisions and 3 implemented changes.
Identified low familiarity with the matchmaking flow; introduced guided onboarding and IA updates, reducing error rate by 25% and task duration by 15%.
Conducted open card sorting with 12 participants to shape the IA and sitemap; iterated prototypes through 3 rounds to improve findability and task success by 20%.
