L.A.R.S.
Legal Asset Review System
2K Games develops and publishes interactive entertainment globally for console systems, PCs, and mobile devices. They were using an antiquated product to record feedback and approvals of in-game assets. The platform had significant tech and UX debt from years of neglect. It was hindering productivity and resulting in low user satisfaction. A complete rebuild was required that would ensure an intuitive and efficient interface with lower error frequency and an increase in user satisfaction.
I was the 1 of 2 designers on an 8-person cross-functional team. As the lead, I drove design strategy, research, and was accountable for all phases of design.
User persona document
Research & approach
To kick off the design process we got to know our users. There were three very distinct user personas to consider. Production assistants who contributed significant data entry and were responsible for managing assets. Administrators who managed projects, users, and permissions, and legal counsel users who reviewed, commented, and assessed the viability of every asset.
We interviewed over 2 dozen people and recorded select user screens. This helped identify what aspects of the software caused the most stress and established our goals of faster data entry, intuitive keyboard shortcuts, and batch editing. We also discovered legal users were often unfamiliar with common UI patterns causing them to feel the software was unintuitive. These discoveries helped refine the product’s requirements, guide our design decisions, and prioritize the many feature requests.
Kanban style
We studied and explored better solutions for organizing, structuring, and labeling our content. Eventually choosing a ticket system that moved along a Kanban board. We color-coded each stage of the ticket’s journey, so, at a glance, users could readily identify any stage of the ticket lifecycle.
Ticket progression document
Ticket creation
Game assets were often delivered in large batches and with accelerated timelines, leading to long hours, fatigue, and errors. Bulk uploading needed a nuanced approach. From the beginning, LARS was built so users could use a .csv file to organize and upload hundreds of assets at a time.
Ticket creation flow chart
Knowing the conditions our users would be working in, we also prioritized the creation of a test upon imported data. It would highlight what lines of the CSV file contained errors. Our first instinct was to stop the import to have them fixed, but this created a wall to entry. We quickly pivoted to a flow that lets users decide, giving them this power created much-needed flexibility.
User's used a CSV file for bulk ticket creation
Single ticket creation
Gamification
For some users, LARS is just elaborate data entry, which can quickly become tedious. While our UX improvements made the process more efficient, it was the gamification of LARS that improved morale the most. With the introduction of a simple leveling and ranking system, points were given for various tasks and users were given reward icons as they advanced. A leaderboard displaying user stats was created. Managers incentivized this feature further with competitions during crucial work times that offered tangible prizes.
Along with all of our other UX improvements, errors were reduced by nearly 70% and users reported a significant increase in satisfaction and enjoyment after using the new product.
User leaderboard
Asset review
Legal users needed functionality to compare each game asset to any inspiration the artist may have used or to any assets found in the public domain. This included images and videos that often needed to be magnified. Without reinventing this functionality, we instead did a comparative analysis across a broad range of popular products to find the correct zoom and pan experience that fulfilled our user's needs and could be built with limited time and resources.
Filtered ticket view
Our preliminary research also revealed that many tickets would share the same information and users were frustrated by having to make the same change across dozens of tickets. This task was very tedious and prone to error. So in addition to bulk uploading we enabled users with the ability to edit tickets in bulk.
Bulk editing
Additionally, we needed to eliminate a workflow that arose when our legal users sought consultation with outside counsel; sharing sensitive assets over email. After improving access to LARS for all outside vendors, we created a feature that gave legal users the ability to pin a comment to a specific part of an image. Adding one of these pins also created a new cropped view.
Comment pinned to an image
Profile view of a user
Conclusion
LARS was a successful reinvention of an antiquated workflow built on outdated software. User satisfaction increased significantly. Managers reported faster onboarding of new users. Error frequency dropped by 68% and projects are being completed 39% faster. These improvements have increased the overall efficiency of 2K’s game publishing at large. Teams now have more time to focus on other areas of game production. To date, the software has handled over a 900,000 assets across several games and counting.
