PlayStation Now
Role: Lead UX Designer
Led UX on our team of 4 very talented user experience professionals. We conducted research, strategy, interaction and visual design, and usability testing on all major features for both Console and PC Platforms. Helped Product shape their requirements and strategy to achieve business and user goals.
Business Opportunity
Grow user base and market penetration of a forward-leading streaming gaming service. PlayStation Now was hosted as the “Netflix of Gaming” and our job as an user experience team was to produce a compelling and exceptional experience to attract users to many first party hits, nostalgia games, and contemporary games. We created a more ubiquitous solution by offering a PC version and offered downloads to reduce barriers of entry for users concerned with latency issues.
Solution
From app landing page to product detail page to media gallery, we created a seamless and engaging experience that grew subscribers significantly. Right now PS Now is one of the premier streaming gaming services with over 3+ million subscribers.
We ran both formalized in-person, remote, and guerrilla user testing, depending on the need, with fully functional prototypes the team built. Created user journeys for the next generation PS Now app which was launched on PS4.
We added video detail previews with streaming video for better engagement and discovery. We also added an All Games section that had filtering functionality to help the the player discover games that match their play style and preferences.
We created flow after flow for the game launch sequence which is highly complex, with the end result being a more fluid load experience for end users.
In addition, we worked tirelessly create a seamless PC version of PlayStation Now as a market leading offering. This PC version, built on the Electron framework, had to be designed with all OS considerations as well as the complex handling of controller input and the ability to support both mouse and controller mode.
Special Credits
Interaction Design
Parsa Shirazi
Visual Design
Andrew Herman & Tom Sisrook
Product Management
Alex Jarzebinski & Adil Sherwani
Program Management
Josh Merkle
User Experience Director
Warren Benedetto
Technical Program Management
Anand Mehta & Robert Millan
Engineering Management
Koichiro Tsutsumi & Peter Saitz
Content and Copy
Rich Leiter