PleaseFix

Product Design

Project Overview

PleaseFix, pioneered by Turbulent and launched in 2021 with strategic partnerships from Cloud Imperium Games and Ubisoft, is the world’s first player-driven bug reporting and resolution platform tailored specifically for the gaming industry.

It revolutionizes how developers and publishers interact with their players by integrating them into the bug reporting and prioritization process, enhancing engagement and streamlining development processes across the sector.

Infos

Studio: Turbulent
(Cloud Imperium Games)
Years: 2020-now

PleaseFix official website

Objectives

• Evolve from a custom solution to a scalable SaaS model, with a limited budget (team of 5-7 people).
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• Engage directly with game developers to refine their workflows and boost efficiency.

• Enable detailed bug submissions while ensuring a seamless user experience.

• Implement tools and processes for rapid client integration, leveraging a versatile multi-brand design system.

My Contributions

Years before I joined the project, Turbulent had developed a bug reporting site for Star Citizen's players. The product and its interface hadn't been updated for some time. When it was time for an upgrade, stakeholders decided to scale up, aiming for a platform that could serve multiple game studios. As the lead product designer, I was deeply involved from the earliest drafts to the product launch.

We began with a small core team to set the product's goals, business strategies, and UX/UI principles. Alongside other designers, I crafted and tested various user flows, wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. Subsequently, I collaborated with Cloud Imperium Games and Ubisoft to create their instances.

Since the soft launch, we refined the product with input from community managers, QA departments, and players from Star Citizen and Rainbow Six Siege.

Today, as the Director of Product Design, I manage the two designers of the PleaseFix Team. One focuses on strategically designing improvements and new features, while the other specializes in evolving our design system.

Impact

Through a detailed and iterative approach, our small team successfully transformed initial concepts into a robust product under tight budget constraints. PleaseFix is now integral to indie and AAA studios alike, driving over hundreds of thousands of player contributions and resolving tens of thousands of issues, directly impacting game quality and player satisfaction.

Designing the Future by Analyzing the Past

To design PleaseFix's first iteration, we didn't start from scratch: Turbulent already launched an issue resolution tool for Star Citizen, years earlier. We had a ton of data and insights that we carefully analyzed.

During multiple co-creation workshops, we designed the first flows, mockups and prototypes of PleaseFix. We had the chance to have a strong partnership with gaming studios to gather valuable feedback during the conception phase. We iterated (and still do) on numerous features to improve the product experience for our two target users: the studio community managers and the players.

Enhancing PleaseFix for All Gamers : a Balancing Act

Since PleaseFix's launch, we've continuously tested and analyzed various features to enhance both user experience and product efficiency. With our two initial founding partners catering to different player bases, we've been able to gather and analyze data from a diverse audience.

We're consistently improving and adding features every month. For instance, we've introduced mobile-specific optimizations for console players who prefer to report issues via mobile while playing on consoles.

One of our ongoing challenges is balancing the needs of our most technical and passionate players, who often request advanced features, with the need to maintain a simple interface that remains accessible to new users.

From Feedback to Feature: How User Insights Drive PleaseFix

We actively collaborate with our clients monthly to discuss their feedback on upcoming features, understand their usage patterns, and explore the feedback they receive from players reporting bugs. Our clients possess deep knowledge of their player communities and the tools they use.

This ongoing dialogue enriches our insights, which we gather from community managers and developers experienced with our platform and also from other online platforms (forums, Discord servers...). Additionally, they give us insight from the feedback about our platform they are directly receiving from their community of players.

Learn More about our collaboration with Ubisoft : PleaseFix presents - Ubisoft's R6Fix

Engage, Report, Resolve

Developing large-scale, successful games like those of our clients is a complex technical challenge, with bugs arising from numerous sources. We created PleaseFix specifically for the gaming industry, ensuring that the bug reporting process is intuitive for players. This allows them to easily browse and report issues during or after their gaming sessions. It’s also structured to provide admins with essential information for issue resolution, such as game version, environment, graphics card, CPU details...

We’ve crafted a user-friendly, step-by-step form that enables players to register detailed information about their setup and gaming session. After submitting a report, players can track the status of their issue via a notification system and engage in discussions through an activity feed with comment and reply functionalities.

Behind the Scenes: Empowering Admins with Pro Features

Many admins and content managers use PleaseFix daily. We've designed features specifically to help them be efficient and engage effectively with their game's players. They have a dedicated interface that allows them to manage the options and filters players use to browse and report issues. Additionally, they can link these issues directly to their company's JIRA system.

Through regular workshops and discussions with these users, we continually refine and enhance our features to boost their efficiency. For example, we have developed several functionalities and improved our interface to reduce the occurrence of duplicate reports, where multiple users submit similar bug issues.

Designing at Scale: a Multi-Brand System

To streamline the creation of new themes during client onboarding, I designed the foundation of our current multi-brand design system, complete with a robust design token architecture. Our Figma files are synchronized with the developers' Storybook, a result of effective teamwork. This setup allows for instant mockup creation in Figma and quick launch of production instances with custom themes tailored to our clients' needs.

Read More on Medium : Case study: The challenges, insights and successes of creating and maintaining a multi-brand design system for PleaseFix.

Personalizing the PleaseFix Interface

Apart from creating an efficient and user-friendly bug reporting flow, one of our key objectives was to make the interface customizable for each client. Depending on their chosen pricing tier, clients can modify assets, colors, and fonts. This flexibility allows PleaseFix instances to integrate seamlessly into their web ecosystems and align with their marketing strategies. For players reporting bugs, it also ensures a delightful experience with brand elements they recognize and trust.

Crafting and Curating PleaseFix's Brand Identity

I led the development of PleaseFix’s initial visual identity, collaborating with a 3D artist to refine specific assets. Now, as director, I oversee the ongoing refinement of our marketing assets to align with our strategic objectives, ensuring consistency across all mediums.