RIOT Games Launcher
This is a personal project. I have no relations with RIOT Games except for being a big fan. The goal of this project was to solve a problem I often run into while improving my visual design skills.
My Role
UI Designer
Team
Personal Project
Timeline
March 2023
Tools
Figma
The Problem
I would consider myself a social gamer. I like to play games to hang out with my friends. I rarely solo-queue and rarely play multiplayer games on my own. Therefore, I like to see which of my friends are online and what they're playing. When the Riot Game launcher first came out, I was disappointed to see that there was no friend list on the launcher itself. I had to open up one of the games to see which of my friends were on and what they were playing. Oftentimes, I would log into a game, only to see my friends were all playing another game. There's so much real estate on the game launcher but it is mostly taken up by large splash art and video about the game...which looks cool but doesn't tell me much about the state of the game, or more importantly for me, which of my friends are online.
Present day RIOT Games Launcher.
Solution
I redesigned the launcher to showcase your friend list before launching any game. With this design, you can see who is online, and what they are playing. You can also send your friend a message. Most of the time, I would ask my friends if they're still playing another game after their current one, so I know if I should log on or not.
Bonus Solution!
While doing this exercise, I was also thinking of how else to utilize the space of the launcher. With recent issues of bad communications between Riot esports and their fans, I tried to use this space to help showcase all the different esports leagues that are happening under Riot's watch. I also created a more prominent tab for patch notes for gamers that want to keep up with the latest changes to the game.
Takeaways
This was a really fun exercise to do. I thoroughly enjoyed learning some new techniques and exploring new ways to visually present information. I hope at some point, Riot will implement this feature.
Edit January 2024: Riot has currently implemented a small area at the top of the client to show which friends are playing what games, which is really cool and helpful! I'm still hoping they will implement the chat feature into the client, but I am happy to see that they are making progress towards connecting friends more easily in their games.