Player One – MVMT

Player.One is dedicated to providing in-depth, passionate coverage of the world of gaming and gamer culture.

Client

Symitri

Year

2016

Services

Brand Strategy & Design
Visual + Verbal Identity
Product Design

UX/UI Design
Creative Direction
Advertising Strategy

The Challenge

The primary mission was to create a destination that captured fans’ imagination, immersing them in everything related to the franchises they love through an intelligent database of rich content, keeping them engaged, informed, and returning for more.

Define brand, mission, editorial objectives and target audiences.
Develop a content strategy that leverages key franchise content types.
Build an experience that centers around branded properties.
Define KPIs based on building an engaged, endemic audience.
Cleary position Player.One as a gaming destination for millennials.
Establish a strong social media presence.
Create new advertising models (branded content and native advertising)
Launch on alternative news platforms (Google AMP and Apple News)

Branding

Working with editors, business leads, and product teams, along with research and user profiles, we conducted naming exercises and visual studies. This process led to a new name with a unique URL extension (.One), a brand mark, and a visual system that resonated strongly with our core audiences.

We aimed to craft a brand that was contemporary and fresh, with a subtle nod to vintage gaming systems through color and shape. Knowing strategically that the brand would live across multiple platforms, consoles, and social media, it was crucial that the identity worked well at reduced sizes and included a memorable, iconic image that could stand alone.

Several names and visual concepts were developed and tested with highly engaged and opinionated focus groups.

Interaction Design

Armed with our user research and strategy findings, we now had a deeper understanding of who we were designing for and what they wanted. Next, it was time to define the optimal experience. Initial analog sketches were created to quickly bring some big ideas to the table and pressure-test them. User flows were generated to better define key interactions and to help envision an overall “design system” that would be refined throughout the product lifecycle.

A detailed set of core template wireframes was created for all platforms and modified throughout the UX/UI, prototyping, and testing phases. Interactive prototypes were then developed for testing during these phases. User experience design and prototyping continued through the development phases and beyond.

Prototyping

Low- and high-fidelity prototypes were created and tested at various stages of the project. We used low-fidelity prototypes in-house to test more detailed navigational elements, especially on mobile, and high-fidelity prototypes to test with user audiences.

After testing the UX designs through mockups and prototypes, we moved on to designing the visual interface and all associated design elements.

Apple News App

We worked closely with the Apple News development team to ensure our content achieved the highest standards of quality and usability.

Player.One was one of the first publications to publish on the Apple News platform.

High Score!

Since its launch, Player.One has experienced rapid growth in traffic and overall engagement.

8 month project lifecycle to launch • New Player.One brand / brand system • Re-platform & launch of Player.one • Created a rich UX experience tailored for content consumption • Created new advertising strategy & modules • Created a product-centered taxonomy / database • Created Apple News & Google AMP experiences • Increase social engagement • Created a global design system

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