Business Heroes: August Dev Diary - UX/UI Evolution
Hello heroes! 👋
Before we begin today's episode, a little heads-up: Are you following Laz the Burger Boss's 10-minute entrepreneurial adventures on YouTube? Catch his latest attempt to discover the perfect burger recipe 🍔 in sunny Australia while serving picky staff at the train station! 🚉
Now, let's get into this dairy.
Sometime in July, we posted a short update about how we began overhauling the game's UX to eliminate pain points players had experienced during our alpha playtest. In this episode, we'll take you behind the scenes to see all the changes we've made.
Strategy games are a fascinating mix of careful planning, decision-making, and intricate game mechanics. A well-designed UX is the only way to fuse these elements into an engaging challenge, making the experience of victory even more satisfying. 🏆
For us, our goal was simple:
Design a UX that welcomes all skill levels, combining intuitive design with the depth and complexity loved by expert players.
We needed to clearly present ample information and diverse functions while guiding players through complexity without overwhelming them. 🤯
Formulating UX Design Principles 🪨
Inspired by player feedback, we crafted four foundational UX tenets based on several user questions to guide our current and future design efforts.
Here’s a summarized version of what we came up with:
Enriched Engagement: Foster player agency and optimal interaction by providing comprehensive data for informed decision-making and an intuitive, predictable interface.
Immersive Feedback & Aesthetics: Use pleasing audio-visual elements with immediate, clear feedback mechanisms to create a deeply resonant and immersive player experience.
Seamless Performance & Navigation: Ensure a stable gaming experience across diverse platforms, with intuitive navigation and quick load times to maximize playtime.
Universal Inclusivity & Community: Make the game universally enjoyable, focusing on cultural sensitivity, accessibility, and diverse gameplay styles to cater to varied demographics.
Ranking Game Mechanics ⚙️
To achieve a smooth progression curve for all skill levels📈, we listed all the game's mechanics and collectively ranked 🔢 them.
On aggregate, we ranked mechanics like basic recipe changes, inventory cost, stand range effects, pricing, etc., for beginner players.
More complex mechanics like expiry, perfect recipes, service speed, employee absence, branding, and so on were ranked for intermediate to advanced players.
User Flow Analysis and Review ↙️⬇️↘️
Next, we analyzed how players navigate through the game to identify opportunities for improvement and eliminate potential roadblocks in the user journey.
One key 🗝️ revelation of this analysis was that the decision-making process for new players was often overwhelming.
To counter this, we streamlined the game's initial stages and minimized the number of choices to encourage a smoother learning curve.
Player Progression Paths 🐾
The insights from our User Flow Analysis became a foundation for developing player progression paths for new and expert players. The main challenge we faced here was to balance complexity with accessibility. We wanted to ensure that the game was easy for beginners yet offered depth and complexity for our more seasoned players.
This was when we stumbled upon the idea of a Research Tree as a solution to balance ⚖️ the complexity and accessibility of the game. A Research Tree presents a clear path for players to strategize their advancement based on their play style. It also significantly streamlines the presentation of information so beginner players can handle it.
Drawing inspiration from the research trees in games like Civilization VI and Oxygen Not Included, we settled on a design that had a logical flow and offered meaningful choices to the players.
Stand shortcut buttons for easy jumping between stands. 🚚
Bottom right hosts gameplay controls ▶️⏯️, integrated calendar 📅, feedback notifications 👍👎, and news 📰.
Bottom left holds operating income 💰, expandable feedback summary.
Essential information displayed without overwhelming players; replaces large matrix with numerical data. 🔢
The main challenges we faced with the sketches were how to balance simplicity with detail and ensure accessibility for visually impaired players.
Wireframing 📐
We eventually went with a blend of both sketches in developing the wireframes. We focused on improving gameplay by decluttering the interface and prioritizing interaction and decision-making.
Some immediately apparent changes from the previous UI 🔄: Environment: Shifted to the right to achieve more natural eye movement and smoother navigation. Labeled Icons: Icons are great, but labels are better because they provide clarity. Tabs: For improved data presentation and usability while ensuring everything's within a few clicks' reach. Nested Data: Nesting data within dropdown buttons helped to declutter the User Interface.
Wireframing the Research View 🔬
The current design has 3 tiers and 7 research paths that cover various operations and business management functions:
Customers: Provides customer segment access and insights.
Menu: Contains everything needed for recipes.
Money: Everything related to financial strategy.
Promotion & Forecasting: For predicting and planning.
Supplies & Storage: Stock management improvement.
Stands & Speeds: For better vehicles and speed.
Team & Queue Control: Workforce management path for maximum output.
How does it work? 🤔 One item in each tier can be researched per turn. A turn is one night and day cycle. Items in Tier 1 unlock after one turn, Tier 2 after two, and Tier 3 after three.
That's it for this episode!
Don't forget to join our community to get these behind-the-scenes specials delivered directly to your inbox. Plus, we've got other exclusive perks waiting for you.
Live Long and Prosper 👋, Team Visionaries
Weekly Short Update #48 📰
Hello heroes, 🤗
Game Achievements 🎯
Completed icon design for all in-game achievements.
UI Wireframe Brainstorming & Design 🧠
Initial design 🎨:
Recipe management view 🍔
Drink management view 🍹
Research view 🔬
Move stand view 🚚💨
Employee management view 🧑🍳
Brainstorming 🤔:
Inventory management view 🥬🍅
Forecast view 🔭
Looking for a unique blend of intricate strategy and classic tycoon gaming? 🎮Join our community and dive into a world where every burger flipped is a step towards your tycoon dream. 🍔👑
DreamHack Beyond Indie Showcase with Laz the Burger Boss
Hello Heroes,
We're excited to announce our participation in the DreamHack Beyond Summer Indie Showcase. And guess whose streams we will be showcasing for the event? Yep, it's Laz the Burger Boss.
Catch the latest episodes of Laz's streams on Steam, starting today, Friday, 18th of August, at 7 pm CET. Come witness the rise and fall of a burger empire in the world of 'Business Heroes'!
Want to participate in our next Playtest? 🤯
Join our community and embrace the challenge in Business Heroes: Food Truck Simulation! 😉
Stand shortcut buttons for easy jumping between stands. 🚚
Bottom right hosts gameplay controls ▶️⏯️, integrated calendar 📅, feedback notifications 👍👎, and news 📰.
Bottom left holds operating income 💰, expandable feedback summary.
Essential information displayed without overwhelming players; replaces large matrix with numerical data. 🔢
Looking for a unique blend of intricate strategy and classic tycoon gaming? 🎮Join our community and dive into a world where every burger flipped is a step towards your tycoon dream. 🍔👑
Weekly Short Update #46 📰
Hello heroes, 🤗
New Implementations 🎁
User Interface
Concluded initial UI format and layout for:
Stand management view 🚚
Product management view 🍔 🌮
Employee management view 🧑🍳
UX Redesign Brainstorming 🧠
Optimal Information grouping.
Overall layout modifications
General fixes and modifications 🛠️
Fixed bug affecting lettuce inventory count. 🪲🥬
Moved news event 📰 sequence from end of day 🌃 to start of day 🌅
Stopped the value of wasted stock from being higher than surplus units ordered. 🍅🥬
Modified storage capacity calculation to deduct storage space by stock amount instead of storage units. 🗄️
Looking for a unique blend of intricate strategy and classic tycoon gaming? 🎮Join our community and dive into a world where every burger flipped is a step towards your tycoon dream. 🍔👑
Boost Your Sales with Customer Patience Strategies 💰
Hello heroes! 👋
You may have heard the phrase "time is money" more times than you can count.
As a food truck entrepreneur, while increasing your efficiency is a great way to boost your profits, there's another factor that can have an equally significant impact on your bottom line: getting customers to wait longer to buy food from your food truck.
This episode is about how customer patience affects a business's performance in the game.
Customers have a default time range for waiting to get their food. This duration is called Customer Patience. Each customer segment's patience is unique. Depending on their lifestyle and daily activities, their default time is more or less.
You can see the default time for each customer segment below. Everything is measured in Milliseconds in-game time, so you can quickly notice the differences.
When customers decide to buy burgers from your stand, and there is a queue, they wait until their default patience time is exceeded.
When that happens, and they still haven't gotten to the front of the queue, they will leave and give a 'wait is too long feedback'.
Customers lost due to a long wait time counts as a missed sale in the Key Performance Indicator section.
Temperature and Weather are the two significant factors that impact customer patience. Customers become impatient when the weather or temperature is unfavourable.
The effect of temperature and weather on the default patience of all customer segments can be seen in the following table:
You can invest in food stand upgrades and employee training to avoid losing customers due to a long wait time and/or bad weather.
Seven food stand upgrades help to increase customer patience. Some entertain customers, while others reduce the weather effect on customers.
Here’s how each of the seven upgrades impact customer patience:
Customer patience upgrades are stand-specific, as some are incompatible with other food stands.
More expensive food stands have wider upgrade compatibility than the less expensive ones. Also, the number of upgrade slots available for each food stand is limited.
For example, here is the compatibility chart for the Burger Bike, Mini Trailer, and Burger Master food stands, respectively, each with three upgrade slots.
The Burger Bike clearly has fewer compatibility options for customer patience upgrades than the Mini Trailer and Burger Master.
So, when running a business with the Burger Bike, investing in improving service speed might be a good idea to avoid losing customers to long wait time.
In summary, increasing customer patience through upgrades or reducing their wait time through faster service speeds is one secret to maximizing sales.
But knowing when to invest in the right combination of upgrades and employee training to produce the best customer outcome makes all the difference in the world.
That's it for this episode!
Don't forget to join our community to get these behind-the-scenes specials delivered directly to your inbox. Plus, we've got other exclusive perks waiting for you.
Live Long and Prosper 👋, Team Visionaries
Weekly Short Update #45 📰
Hello heroes, 🤗
New Implementations 🎁
User Interface
Repositioned the layout of the User Interface.
Implemented Research View 🔬 and Forecast View.
Added expand and collapse tab functionality for buttons.
Tab buttons now expand and collapse by turns or maximum expanded tabs.
Grouped stand shortcut by locality and made to appear on locality hover.
UX Redesign Brainstorming 🧠
Visualising tabs for main buttons
Primary and secondary colour selection 🟢🟣
General fixes and modifications 🛠️
Increased the size of stand shortcuts.
Reduced duration ⏱️ to expand stand shortcuts on locality button hover.
Modified highlight positions for buttons 🔲
Hid secondary buttons in the research view and tab contents in Forecast and Marketing tabs.
Looking for a unique blend of intricate strategy and classic tycoon gaming? 🎮Join our community and dive into a world where every burger flipped is a step towards your tycoon dream. 🍔👑
Weekly Short Update #44 📰
Hello heroes, 🤗
Since we concluded the alpha test earlier this month, we have painstakingly reviewed all the fantastic feedback we received from the community. While most of it was positive and encouraging, we discovered that difficulty navigating the UI and rough player onboarding were recurrent pain points players experienced.
As a result, we decided to embark on a total overhaul of the User Experience to eliminate, or at least minimize, as much as possible, those pain points. This process will be executed in a feedback loop with our discord community to ensure the outcome effectively addresses the issues.
UX Redesign Brainstorming 🧠
Ranking of game mechanics by skill level
User flow analysis and review
Critical player progression paths for New and Expert players
Research tree conceptualization and initial design
Looking for a unique blend of intricate strategy and classic tycoon gaming? 🎮Join our community and dive into a world where every burger flipped is a step towards your tycoon dream. 🍔👑
Weekly Short Update #43 📰
Hello heroes, 🤗
New Implementations 🎁
User Interface
Added visual cues to group primary and secondary navigation buttons together.
Implemented a hover effect for Street Corner in city view 🏙️ when player starts the game.
Career mode 🧑🎓 now contains 3 different difficulty levels.
UX Redesign Brainstorming
New set of UX design principles to guide our current and future design efforts
Career mode scope for advanced, intermediate, and beginner players.
General fixes and modifications 🛠️
Added box-in animation for tips highlight visual effects
Modified the default stand inventory size from 12 burgers 🍔 to 60.
Changed the "no stock ordered" warning ⚠️ when the player has no stock to show "low stock" when the player has 10 burgers 🍔 left.
Moved the mission brief to the centre of the screen. 🖥️
Looking for a unique blend of intricate strategy and classic tycoon gaming? 🎮Join our community and dive into a world where every burger flipped is a step towards your tycoon dream. 🍔👑
Weekly Short Update #42 📰
Hello heroes, 🤗
New Implementations 🎁
User Interface
Several tooltip 💬 implementations.
Added next stand ◀️▶️buttons to performance summary view
General fixes and modifications 🛠️
Implemented the lock 🔒function for buttons 🔼🔽 in career mode instead of hiding them completely
Modified the city 🏙️and locality population design for multiple event types
Fix bug 🪲 in population data that stopped the start-day sequence.
Event 📰 effect on upgrades pricing now shows in upgrades tooltip 💬
Inflation event impact on Employee market rate 🧑🍳 now displays correctly.
Looking for a unique blend of intricate strategy and classic tycoon gaming? 🎮Join our community and dive into a world where every burger flipped is a step towards your tycoon dream. 🍔👑
