case study ui/ux

warframe foundry redesign

This redesign was created as a personal UX/UI design exercise and portfolio piece. I have a lot of love and respect for Warframe and the team at Digital Extremes. This project isn’t intended as criticism of the original design, but rather as an opportunity to explore alternative solutions and learn from a game I love.

Tools I used:

Figma
Krita
— 01. explanations

Redesigning is a Challenge

A few months back I decided to have a closer look at the design of the Foundry in Warframe, being a player with more or less 860+ hours, I wasn’t paying attention to the way it worked anymore but still, a few things were annoying me when it came to the foundry, details that I knew could be changed for the better. Warframe being one of my favorite games to spend time on, I enjoyed imagining what could have been improved and how to push the boundaries of the already existing design.
I quickly realized that I had underestimated the amount of work involved on such a redesign project. The foundry in Warframe is used to do many things, primarily to build warframes but not only: weapons, secondary equipment and so on so I decided for the purpose of this redesign to focus on the warframe part of the foundry. 
The already established and working foundry system wasn’t flawed or anything, it just needed improvement on a UX (User Experience) side and better legibility on the UI (User Interface) side. 
1

Design Goal : Reduction of frictions

By reducing cognitive load with small details such as adding an icon for an already mastered item of putting a tag system in place for the different states of a craft.

2

Design Goals : Improving clarity

Improving crafting clarity by reorganizing the Foundry around what the player wants to build with a set oriented navigation.

— 02. user researchs

Finding the frictions

My choices for this redesign are the result of many reflections and tests done with a few veteran players of Warframe as well as some newcomers, one of the main challenges was to find a design well-suited for veterans as well as new players so as to guide them and make the learning curve for the Foundry easier but also not frustrate veterans with a design they are not used to and do not wish to use.
To be sure that I was aware of the main frictions I did not only consider my own experience of the game but also the different ‘rants’ a few players gladly decided to share on Reddit.
  • “After 10 years of new weapons and frames, it would be really nice to have a toggle to hide what has already been mastered, to clean up the foundry, which would help new and old players alike! And there are times where I wish the search feature worked a bit more broadly, like if I could search “Deimos” and get all the weapons and gems found from Deimos, or “k-drive” and see all the kdrive parts in the modular section. Right now the foundry could just use a bit more love!!”
  • “If they really wanted to give us good QoL they would also make the search significantly better, so that if you for example want to make bonewidow, actual bonewidow parts end up at the top, then any gems you need to make bonewidow also show up below that. In short not only would the part with the name you searched up show up, but all craftable components needed to craft said part would also show up”

  • “This whole conversation needs to be a thing in game! Items matching “word for word” with your search terms are shown first before items that use it is definitely how it should be done..
    The order should be:
    1. Exact match of search term.
    2. Components required to craft the exact match. This includes components required to craft other components for the exact match.
    3. Items that use the exact match in crafting.”
  • “I would also like that feature for parts. Sometimes I forgot which weapons I have already mastered because I can’t be bothered to look the codex every time .”

Results of this observation:

Reading all the comments on the already existing system, it reinforced my analysis and observations on it. The need for a UI/UX rework was clear.
The two main axes of improvement were:
  • Better visibility and clarity of what was already mastered or not.
  • A set-oriented navigation system, less friction in having to find the different parts and components the player wants to craft in order to craft a whole warframe.
Below are my visual references for the Foundry but also other references of more ‘modern’ Warframe interfaces to compare visually but also practically.
— 03. the process

V1 & V2, why did the first versions fail ?

My first two attempts at the redesign weren’t as successful as I had planned.
The interface wasn’t clear enough, the visuals were too far from the original and it wasn’t improving the main areas for improvement identified earlier. I was trying to establish a new system with layers of opacity defining the different states of a warframe or a component and it wasn’t visually working well.

The last version:

With this last version, I had to create a system within the system. The whole organization of the foundry needed a rework and this is, to this day, the best solution I could present.
What you see here is a system based on colors and tags that the player can identify easily and quickly.
As you are about to see with the video below, the player now has access to the entire process of a warframe as soon as they obtain one of its set pieces. The different colors and tags are used to guide the players throughout the whole crafting of a warframe, each step having its own indicators toward the player.
— 04. the final design