During the summer of 2021, I worked as an Interaction Designer at Tencent's Platform & Publish Design Center in Shenzhen, China. The project team I worked on is part of Tencent's attempt to expand its international business in the video game sector. I was tasked with designing the social system for a game that meets the following requirements:

I began the design process by reviewing and learning from numerous popular video games, and doing user research to pinpoint gamers' main goals when using the social system. After obtaining ample information about both game social systems and the people using them, I synthesized (1) good UI design practices and (2) users' primary goals when using the social system, which I used as guiding principles when creating the design.

The competitor analysis included studying 12 popular video games in depth. All games support multiple languages and most run on at least two platforms. Extensive research led to the synthesis of good design practices.

Throughout the design process, I also compiled a 12,000-word Globalization Design Guide (in Chinese) with releveant design rules, examples, as well as design methodologies I created. It currently lives on the P&P Design Center internal website and is being used as a reference for similar projects.

I am in the process of translating the Design Guide from Chinese to English to make that knowledge available to everyone.

Meanwhile, I decided to take a qualitative user research approach by conducting in-depth interviews with 8 expeirenced gamers in both China and the U.S., asking questions like "what do you mainly use the social system to do?" and "how effectively do you think you were able to complete your goals?". Since the design serves gamers only, I thought that as opposed to a large number of surveys, it is more beneficial to talk to experienced gamers who are familiar with the social system and can clearly articulate their needs and goals.

‍Based on the information obtained, I divided "Social System" into three distinct modules, each helping users complete unique jobs:

With the above information in mind, I laid out the basic user flow of the social system design (version below is translated into English), divided into the three modules mentioned above. I began with a simpler overall structure, and then gradually added every single possible screen throughout the design process.

With the above information in mind, I laid out the basic user flow of the social system design (version below is translated into English), divided into the three modules mentioned above. I began with a simpler overall structure, and then gradually added every single possible screen throughout the design process.

Below are some specific adjustments I made to the design, in order to satisfy the project requirements about cross-platform adaptability and UI internationalization.

‍(1) Cross-Platform Design: Mobile Adjustment
‍Utilizing my in-depth research, I decided to keep the PC & console interface fairly similar in design to keep cross-platform experience as uniform as possible for PC & console users. I needed to implemente a handful of adjustments of the mobile interface due to its significantly smaller screen size and mobile users' different habits. Many mobile UIs need to be considerably larger, and some UIs' positions need to be adjusted to maintain clickability.

To summarize all the changes, I created a much simpler user flow of the social system on mobile platform, highlighting screens that have notable differences from the PC and console versions.

(2) Interface Supports Multiple Languages
‍When designing the interface, I specifically focused on maintaining a uniform look in multiple languages of different lengths, and avoid problems such as text being too long to fit in the UI. Two strategies are used. Firstly, I paid specific attention to spacing and layout, following the design practice of leaving ~100% extra space based on English text length, which I synthesized from competitor analysis.

The second method is to utilize animation such as text rolling to accommodate longer text in a smaller space. Since rolling text takes longer for users to read, I limited the use of this feature to when it was the only solution that works to accommodate long text.

By working at Tencent, I learned a lot about myself both as a designer and a collaborator. Below are some advantages I have synthesized as part of my reflection of my time there:

The project is currently under development and has not been released. With my company's approval, I was able to share my design process and the limited design demo above.