[UX] Quick overview of a new campaign page

Day 2,641, 13:27 • Published in Lithuania Lithuania • by EmuSV


Hello folks,

{Short introduction you may skip it 🙂
few years ago I started my MA in user-centered design studies... As well as started to be into erepublik for real. Two years passed and funny enough i got a job and now work with web UX (user experience). I am still here in erep and what I see terrifies me. And you don't have to have education in the design to see that too, massive chain of posts has already started.}

But anyway I allowed my self to use my knowledge and do short review from UX point of view. So what does Plato teaches us about user experience?

Probably everyone opening game this morning noticed several changes...

First of all bigger widgets and disproportionate FIGHT buttons in the home page (why do I need bigger button? I do fight every day anyway?! I found that annoying).

And of course precious new "toy" for damage acceleration. May be useful for some BH hunters I thought...

And than you know what happened - New Military Campaigns page...

before going to it I want to look back what we had on an old one.

My use case scenario for campaign pages was:
> to see all Lithuania's campaigns;
> to find suitable campaigns to fight for FF medal;
> to find some battles that are epic/has COs;
> to see whom my allies are fighting with...
> [Add your own]

And this old page helped me as a player just fine. I loved simplicity of it.
> I could see all the campaigns and results they had,
> I could quickly skim trough it
> I could see where epics are ,
> I could see where COs are ...
> I could see region's name easily
> Tank icon would show pretty well who is attacking whom .
> All campaigns were sorted out well, starting with my countries campaigns...
> Allies campaigns and RWs were visible very well too.
> User interface wasn't perfect but neat, not annoying, not distracting.
> [Add your own]

And now what do we have now? It just breaks my heart.

What can I do here? NOTHING.

> I cannot see all the campaigns at once (that means I need to scroll up and down to compare battles and find things I need.)
> Okay I can see new clock icon, new battle statuses (of course they had to implement that but Icons would have helped here just fine)... That is not an advantage.
> I can see that they tried to show COs in some modern way that is still debugged... (not surprised huh?)

> All the interface screams out and you don't know where to put your attention. Everything is very bright! (UI may look more modern but that's all).
> Blue background and red resistance hand - my eyes are hurting...
> [Add your own]

To point out Erep's team is looking for a designer for quite long.
http://jobs.erepublik.com/position/Ui-Ux-Designer--26
According to changes made, I think, they hired someone... Honestly, he/she is not doing very good job. Dear ereps team, please do something about that. And please bring back the old campaign page with some minor changes that would adapt it with new concepts you have introduced. STOP RUINING GOOD THINGS THAT ARE STILL here...

I won't try to write about principles of UI/UX cause this article got already too long, but I guess most of you would agree with points I gave...
...But the main point is that this game is keeping on and holding on US, players.. So it is shame that while implementing change erep's team is forgetting most important persona in this - user?!

And to finalize - what does Plato teaches us about user experience? Definitely nothing that we should learn from. His assumption might be that users will get used to it. And that's correct, but breaks the main rule of good UI/UX design. Plato simply doesn't care, I guess?...

p.s. I'll send this to erep's support team with kindest regards. So please leave some kind words to them. Maybe they'll offer me a job position 😁)))