WB Games Bug Tracker
Giving gamers a say in what gets fixed.
Transparency in bug tracking hasn’t historically been game developers strong suit. Neither has making sure the priority fixes are influenced by the gamers. To move in the right direction, Warner Bros. Games sought to increase communication and empower gamers by creating a bug tracking system where their voices are heard. This meant gamers could tell WB Games which bugs were important to them and give the developers the necessary information to get to work. With this clear goal in mind, we got to work.
ROLE
Concepting
User Experience
Art Direction
Visual Design
CLIENT
Warner Bros. Games (2020)
Maximalism but make it information architecture
“Less is more” will never steer you wrong in design. With the bug tracker, we decided to steer the ship in the other direction. We wanted the users to have all pertinent information elevated to the surface so they wouldn’t have to go in and out of individual bugs to digest issues the community was having. This meant from just the landing page users got quick access to bookmarking, flagging, fix status, and voting which encouraged our user-prioritized mechanics.
Time to add some bugs!
With this being a bug tracker, reporting the bug is possibly the most important part. First time users would be prompted to provide their console’s tech specs but then get into a comprehensive list of logging fields. While the design on the surface isn’t complex, in conjunction with in-house development we made sure these bugs would easily and seamlessly be able to migrate to Jira workflows.
You’ve logged a bug.
Way. To. Go!
The bug detail page allows anyone to understand the issue you’re having, see how to try and reproduce it, add photos/videos, and join in on the discussion through a fully-featured custom comment system (complete with special moderator powers).
Keeping track of your contributions
With the bugs being user-generated, users needed somewhere to locate their issues among the, hopefully few, other submissions. On their account page have the ability to view the bugs they personally reported but also keep tabs on other players’ bugs through a bookmarking system.
Custom platform powered by custom CMS
Not as flashy as a functional bug tracking web platform but in parallel to the design and development of the front-end experience we created a custom CMS tailored to the workflows and needs of the WB Games development teams. From here, bugs could be tracked, monitored, moderated, and exported to Jira.
