Yakuza Unleashed
Virtual tourism mobile app connecting players of the Yakuza game series to the city that inspired the setting, Kabukicho, Japan.
Role
UX/UI Designer
(User Research, Qualitative Data Synthesis, User Flows, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing, Visual Design)
Team
Individual Project
Tools
Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects
Virtual tourism for Yakuza fans
The Yakuza franchise has proven to be a long-standing success and are in the top best selling Sega games. Since the launch of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, the latest and most successful Yakuza game internationally to date, Sega has re-evaluated their growth strategy. They want to target international audiences and give fans content while the next sequel game is in development.
Sega of America plans to provide fans with an companion app to explore the city of Kabukicho that inspired the Yakuza series in light of the increased interest in tourism to Japan now that travel restrictions due to Covid-19 have been lifted. To keep current fans invested in the world of Yakuza and pull in more fans to the franchise, the app will provide a way to connect real life to the in-game beloved setting of Kamurocho from home.
Context
Fans of the Yakuza franchise want to explore the real-world locations that inspired the games. Fans who cannot visit in-person want a way to walk around the real-world locations of their favorite in-game points of interest.
Problem
01
Currently fans who want to explore Kabukicho, the city that inspired the Yakuza games, have to use Google Street View in combination with translation tools.
Yakuza fans are deeply interested in the virtual tourism of the Yakuza games and have to cross-reference the locations in game with ones on Google Street view manually while researching more about the locations.
02
Yakuza players want to learn the history of locations they are familiar with from the games.
Yakuza fans form an attachment to the world of the game. They feel familiarity with the real world locations because they have formed “memories” with the parallel in-game locations in Kamurocho.
Solution: Yakuza Unleashed - A mobile app that lets fans explore the streets of Kabukicho
Yakuza Unleashed is a virtual tourism app that lets fans of the games explore the streets of Kabukicho, learn about points of interest, and compare locations to in-game areas.
The challenging search to find Research Participants
It was a challenge to quickly recruit and interview a niche group of users, fans of the Yakuza games. I had to get creative with outreach by utilizing my network of gamer friends and posting on related forums and discord servers. I simultaneously sent out online user surveys which would quickly garner a lot of information without asking for too much.
Through interviews and the survey, I wanted to find out what makes the Yakuza games unique to fans, what do users want in a Yakuza virtual tourism app, and any feature ideas that sparked their imagination.
User Interviews & Online User Survey: Key Insights
The Yakuza games are unique because they mix of a variety of different experiences: the combination of comedic and serious tones, exploration of highly detailed Japanese cities, and the substories and minigames. Substories are a particular beloved feature of the games and an integral part of the Yakuza franchise.
A dedicated virtual tourism app would eliminate the need for extensive research when trying to find the real world equivalents of in-game locations.
Fans are really interested in learning about the history and culture of locations in Kabukicho and comparing them to the in-game locations of Kamurocho.
Research Synthesis
Trends among users were identified through affinity mapping.
How to create a Virtual Tourism product that does not exist yet.
Ideation to Usability Prototype
It was a very interesting challenge to ideate a new kind of product. There are a few apps that are close to the experience of combining virtual tourism with gaming such as Pokemon Go, but these apps would not meet the goal of comparing real world locations in Kabukicho to the in-game locations of Kamurocho while providing history and background information.
I had ambitious plans that I wasn’t sure were possible to prototype, but I wanted to challenge myself to create these Key Features:
Emulate a Google Street View like exploration
Many methods of navigating to locations
Ability to toggle view from Kabukicho to Kamurocho
Substories to explore and give users incentive to explore different locations
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This ideation to usability prototype process was truly a lesson in figuring new methods out as I went along.
Leaving Substories out of Usability Testing
While Substories are an integral part of the experience and uniqueness of Yakuza games, I had to scale back the scope and focus on virtual tourism for usability testing. While an exciting feature that users wanted, I learned to readjust my plans and prioritize features to ensure feasibility.
4 Major Insights from Usability Testing
01
Users need an onboarding section explaining the features of the app before committing to making an account.
Users felt pleasantly surprised and did not expect all the features of the app, but would have preferred to know what they were getting into beforehand. Also, the name Yakuza Unleashed needed a tagline to better explain its purpose.
02
Users had a positive reaction to the Compare Views feature.
Users liked comparing the real world interest point to the in-game location by using a slider. It was intuitive to use even though they have never encountered something like it before.
03
Users all had different methods of navigation to get to a different location.
Having many options allowed users to choose their preferred navigation route and all of the users felt that the app adequately allowed them to explore.
04
Users want to be able to save Points of Interest to their travel lists and Google Maps.
Users wanted to use the app as a way to pre-plan their trip to Kabukicho, Japan, and be able to save locations to their personal travel lists.
The Final Product: Yakuza Unleashed
Yakuza Unleashed is a virtual tourism app that lets fans of the games explore the streets of Kabukicho, learn about points of interest, and compare locations to in-game areas.
Explore the streets of Kabukicho
Navigate through the streets of Kabukicho, Japan, by freely exploring, using the Search Bar, or choosing Categories of interest.
Learn more about the history of Interest Points and game events that occurred at each location
View photos and videos of the location while learning more about its history in real life and in-game.
Compare and Contrast Kabukicho to Kamurocho
Use the slider to show how locations look in real life compared to the in-game area. Additionally, view how the locations changed over time as the games progressed.
Prototype
Try it out! This usability prototype is meant to test for the following user tasks:
Going through onboarding
Find more information about Interest Points
Navigation to Club Sega by free exploration or through the Search functions
Reflection
My thoughts on this project and Lessons Learned
1. Challenges — Creating a niche tourism product that doesn’t exist yet.
Finding research participants for a niche game series in a short amount of time was a tough task. I had to really get creative in my outreach methods by going through forums and discord servers.
Ideating a tourism product that compared and contrasted real life locations to in-game ones was tough because nothing quite like that exists yet.
I had to balance including content from 7 previous Yakuza games while providing users options to avoid spoilers.
2. Key Takeaway — Be flexible, adaptable, and curious while staying in scope.
This project really stretched my abilities to get creative about every aspect of the research and design process. From the chaos comes direction the more you iterate and get user feedback.
I learned the hard lesson of reeling back project scope by removing Substories in order to be feasible. This project really stressed to me the importance of feature prioritization.
3. Next steps — Integrating Substories and gamification.
Substories are an integral part of the Yakuza franchise and I have created a flow for a Substory but have yet to integrate it into the main app flow. During usability testing users felt adding Substories would keep them more engaged to return to the app through gamification.
Substories Showcase
These are screens for a Substory flow that would need to be further integrated into the main app.