A partnership between Microsoft, Mountain Dew and Doritos to help promote the launch of the new Xbox console, the Xbox One X. The clients hired my agency HYFN to design and execute an experiential marketing activation called Drop Zone, an event-based app where digital Xbox consoles were “dropped” inside of physical geofences around New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. An AR style app that would be described as "capture the flag meets Pokemon Go" with the purpose of generating a massive PR splash.

About the project

Company

HYFN

March 2017 - February 2019

Contribution

UX Designer

Team

Nick Boes - Creative Director

Kruise Sapstein- Art Director

Geoff Roseborough- Interactive Designer

Aaron Buchanan - Engineer

There are a lot of UX nuances that come into play when designing a video game. I began by creating a set of basic gameplay mechanics derived from our original concept pitch. We would need to account for all the possible scenarios that could potentially occur within the experience without letting anything fall through the cracks.

In order to visually illustrate how certain aspects of the experience would work, I created user flows for registration, code banking as well as a gameplay mechanics diagram. This diagram was a living, breathing artifact that was constantly updated and referred to as we tweaked and tested the details of the in-game experience.

In the scenario below, the red player captures one of the virtual Xbox consoles and becomes the target. The red player is also in possession of a shield which prevents the console from being stolen. The purple player, however, approaches with a shield buster and successfully breaks the shield and steals the console.

Midway through the project, our client's legal team contacted us and told us they determined that there would be too much risk for them to be sued if we carried out the scavenger hunts in large areas of the cities. We needed to pivot, so our solution was to conduct the hunts inside of large parks in areas with no roads that would put users in danger of being hit by cars. Each participant would need to sign in at a check in desk prior to the event and sign a waiver.

I thought through the entire experience in a series of user flows to help the client wrap their head around the process and to assist our developers in building the framework for the app. Below is a flow detailing the general process of the scavenger hunt for the user.

Next I conducted a series of working sessions with our visual designers and developers to determine UI and functionality needs of the app. Our sketches evolved into a a number of wireframe iterations shown here.

After many decisions were made, I fleshed out a round of slightly higher fidelity wireframes and annotated them for client presentation and also added technical notes for our developers when needed.

Conclusion

I worked closely with other designers on the team to make sure each UI element thought through and all the motion and microinteractions were smooth and meaningful. We were extremely pleased with our final result, as was the client.

These screens are examples of a user that is tracking a console. The user activates a steal booster, then taps a capture button when the come within range of another user that has posession of a console.

App preview video that was made for Comic Con

Drop Zone Scavenger Hunts were held in three cities: Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, during the fall of 2017. We learned something each time and overall it was a success. Multiple news outlets including Hypebeast, a.list and Gamespot all wrote positive articles covering the events. Joel Mchale also made an appearance at the New York Drop.

We reached out to a number of influencers in the gaming world to help us publicize the events, Twitch streamer Reckful livestreamed the Chicago event which some of us watched from our LA office.

Over the course of 3 days, 2,303 players participated in the Drop Zone scavenger hunt. One of the most rewarding aspects to the Drop Zone project was to see people genuinely excited and overwhelmed with winning a Xbox Console. This is a reaction that we don’t get to experience on the other side of the digital things that we create, so it was refreshing and a nice end to a project that consumed our lives for most of the year.