Fixing the Hearthstone Interface (Another Finding)

Blizzard has done an amazing job over the years creating fun and exciting content to keep the Hearthstone player base engaged. My personal favorite addition from Blizzard is the new game modes they've added over the years; however, this is also where my gripe with the interface stems from. The current location of the different game modes seem arbitrary and unintuitive to find.

A summary of my need finding, data inventory, and prototyping regarding this interface project can be found on my website's home page and as such, this blog post will focus on another finding I made.

The primary finding was that despite the process of getting to the Arena game mode and the process of getting to the Battlegrounds game mode being exactly the same, Battlegrounds players were noticeably happier with the interface. When answering the survey question regarding the process of finding their desired game mode, 25% of Arena players voted that it was difficult to find (an answer of either 4 or 5) while only 16% of Battlegrounds players found their specified game mode difficult to find.

I believe the reason for this is that previously the Arena game mode was accessible from the home screen and upon the release of Battlegrounds it was hidden away under a "Modes" tab. This accessibility being taken away from Arena players left a bad taste in their mouth, while the Battlegrounds players never had the luxury of their game mode being directly accessible from the home screen.

This leads me to the lesson that taking away something from players leaves the players with disdain and should not be done without heavy consideration.