ROLE
UX/UI Design
Project Lead

TEAM
Adele Major - Strategy
ABC Entertainment Team (stakeholders)

YEAR
2025

The Challenge

To create a series of games based on ABC content that encourages habitual return of audience, and provide entertainment in an environment of news fatigue.

The Process

Workshops
We ran two ideation workshops with participants including content makers, News product designers and some Innovation Lab strategists, designers and developers to generate original game ideas.

Concept Designs
We selected three game concepts to take into a concept design phase. I designed them as Figma prototypes, and then the developers in the Innovation Lab built them out as interactive web-based prototypes.

User Testing
We conducted user testing sessions with various ABC staff to learn about any issues with game comprehension, complexity, interactions, and generally whether the games were fun or not.

A live pilot on ABC news

After refining the games based on our user testing feedback, we selected the game ‘Matches’ to build as it was very simple to understand and could be used for a wide variety of content types, not just entertainment. The game was built to sit in an iFrame for the pilot so we could bypass needing a CMS in order to simply test the idea.

What would I do next?

I analysed heatmaps and session recordings using Microsoft Clarity which uncovered some changes I would make to the game design.
The game needs a second pilot with different content subject matter and marketing/promotion, along with audience feedback input to understand whether the game is worth pursuing.

The result

We designed and created a game from scratch that was played by thousands of ABC readers on the abc.net.au website! The game was understood and playable.

The goal would be to house a suite of games on the ABC News app and website, that are updated daily to create a fun, daily respite from the news.