Socializing in a Time of Social Distancing — a UX case study
How It Works

Using the sketches and brand specifications as a guideline, I developed a high-fidelity prototype of AniCade.

The Map

Spatial visualization of friends for physical proximity.

Here, users can see friends who are online, find and collect items, visit item shops, and play mini-games. We believed that a physical visualization of users could foster a sense of geographical proximity, which could encourage more meaningful interactions between users.

Meaningful interactions between friends.

Users can interact with a friend on the map by simply tapping on their avatar. Through this feature, users can send emojis to each other, chat, share music, play a game, and even send a gift.

A sense of exploration & reward.

The map has scattered collectible items that users can either keep or sell for AniCade coins. We felt this feature could incentivize users to explore and connect with friends on the map and to engage their avatars, through customization with the items collected. Additionally, users can find item stores around the map and buy more items.

Maintain & build social connections.

On the map, users can find two types of mini-games to play: mini-game ❤ & mini-game +. While mini-game ❤ allows users to play games with their existing friends, mini-game + operates on a larger server, allowing them to play games with their friends and also strangers.

The Chatroom

An actual “room” for chatting.

AniCade’s chatroom is designed in a way that mimics real physical spaces through three-dimensional visual elements and speech bubbles for more synchronous conversations.

We felt that asynchronous conversations could help promote social interactions between friends online, as they have to pay close attention to the fast-paced conversations.

Never miss a beat.

During our autobiographical study with Club Penguin Rewritten, we found one of the biggest frustrations to be that we would miss some key messages in the speech bubble. To avoid this pain point, we implemented a chat history feature on AniCade, so that users can always find messages that they might have missed.

Personalized Avatars

A sense of escapism.

On AniCade, users play as animal avatars, which they can customize. On the profile page, users can change the appearance of their avatars using items that they bought, collected, or were gifted by their friends. They can also purchase items in the “Shop” section.

At any point in time, users can change their avatars from a selection of animals we offer.
['Hye Won Kim']
['Product Design', 'UX Research', 'Case Study', 'UI Design', 'UX Design']