Olivier Lacoste
Product & UX Designer
Design of an application for managing role plays.
Jidéaire is a project made to answer a problematic of the role-players which is "How to facilitate the organization and the management of a role-play?” While not hiding the immersion of the players and thus propose a better management to the GM (Master of the game).
A virtual tabletop application for desktop and mobile to easily create and manage your roleplay.
User Research, Prototyping for usability test, Usability Testing, Methodology workshop.
We have used Design Thinking for this project, this methodology giving us the perspective of thinking fast and with Iterations with the assistance of User Test or User Interview.
A board game in which several participants create and experience a story together through dialogue, each playing a character. The game leader (GM) has a scenario, created by him or her or by another person, which he or she uses to describe the environment, the universe through which the players pass.
During my master, I had the opportunity to work on a project without a real subject which allowed me to get interested in the world of role playing games (RPG). I was able to learn about the needs of role-playing game players, but also to test iteration methods and to do user workshops.
The principle of the JDR is to do it in physics, because you can create an atmosphere which was not possible with the covid which limited the possibilities of creating an atmosphere. It is by starting from this observation that we wished to propose a solution.
For the players of JDR it is complicated to play on a classic software of communication, because it misses several functionalities as, for example, music which allows to create a sonord atmosphere or the chart of events that have to be done with greater facility. Or to have access to the player's sheet and its follow-up during the adventure.
To summarize, we need to focus our project on :
→ Helping to introduce the universe at the beginning of the JDR
→ Facilitating the management of character sheets (creation, evolution, damage, skills, etc...)
→ Facilitating the management of environments during the game
→ Facilitate the respect of possible rules
→ To allow the organisation of JDR evenings→ To summarise the previous session
For game masters, it is complex to juggle the events that could happen to the player when they arrive at a given point and to manage if a player wishes to go to another side. The idea for the GM is to help him to better organize himself and manage the possible unforeseen events. To do this we need to focus on:
→ Helping to introduce the universe at the beginning of the JDR
→ Facilitating the management of character sheets (creation, evolution, damage, skills, etc...)
→ Facilitate the management of environments during the game
→ Allow you to organize JDR evenings
→ Make it easier for the GM to follow the scenario
→ Allow marking events that happened during a session
→ Allow to summarize the previous session.
Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation. It is a method or a global design process, centered on the user (or the human), in order to realize innovative services or products.
This workshop allowed us to know which assumptions are the most important for our project.
This allowed us to clarify and support our hypotheses and define several profiles of role-players.
This allowed us to confront our hypotheses defined beforehand and thus to create several bread points to answer with our solution.
We allow you to define your interface and the tools you use to make the experience easier.
This workshop allows with the users to classify the features by types in order to arrange the product clearly so that the users can find their way around.
Structure the version planning of a project and thus prioritize the functionalities.
Most veteran role players are already using solutions to the availability and distance problems of face-to-face role-playing: they use virtual table software. Unfortunately, these often require a certain understanding of role-playing.
There are general rules to respect when you are the master of the game, but there is no real guide: everyone manages in their own way. Management (or “mastering”) requires both framing (respect for the rules, precise description of the universe, coherent management of the players' actions, etc.) and improvisational skills.
For the uninitiated to get into role-playing, they need to play with friends, with simple and well-framed rules. This framing requires that the game master has a well-defined and created universe and rules.
Following the expectations of the users of the application and our feedback during interviews, workshops, questionnaires. We propose “A virtual tabletop application for desktop & mobile to easily create and manage your role-play”. These exercises provided an excellent basis for ideation and prioritization of features.
Create or import your scenario, encyclopaedia, character sheets and rules or use preset parameters to quickly and easily build your RPG.
Manage in real time the character sheets, the information in the map players cross, the environment and the music in a few clicks.
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The software / application can be used in face-to-face to help game master to manage the RPG and in remote with a communication application (Skype / Discord / Google meet) if players cannot met themselves to participate in a physical session.
Game masters can put their RPG as public and share it. Anyone can ask them to join their RPG campaign.
To take into account the time of conception of the application, we have made many more functionalities in order to answer most precisely our problem. We have taken the risk to revise our problematic downwards in order to be in time to release the prototype.
Many designers want to undertake projects that are of obvious interest to the company and to the users. However, it is important to involve people from other teams from the start and to continually explain and discuss the progress of ongoing projects. This helps to get buy-in from stakeholders and to get different points of view to create a better product.
