Joystick is a game discovery system designed to reduce emotional risk for players navigating unsafe or exclusionary gaming spaces.
impact: designed and tested four end-to-end prototypes to evaluate how discovery systems can reduce emotional risk, establish trust, and support informed consent in gameplay decisions.
my role
UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher
timeline
april - june 2025
tools
Figma, FigJam, Google Suite
↦ “It's dangerous to go alone."
-The Legend of Zelda
↦ framing the problem
game discovery is not a neutral experience
From an early age, I've loved playing video games. They offer connection, restoration, and identity affirmation - but those benefits feel unevenly distributed. For many players, particularly those from marginalized communities, game discovery carries risk — social, emotional, and sometimes physical.
As gaming audiences have diversified, discovery tools have remained largely unchanged. Most platforms continue to prioritize popularity, performance metrics, and aggregated scores, while overlooking accessibility, community behavior, representation, and emotional safety. The result is an invisible burden placed on players to assess whether a game will welcome them, tolerate them, or harm them.
Joystick was shaped by a different (and emotionally personal) premise: discovery systems should reduce risk rather than externalize it.
↦ research & insights
understanding harm, trust, and decision fatigue in game discovery
My research showed that discovery decisions are shaped less by preference than by risk avoidance. For many players, especially those with prior experiences of harm, choosing a game involves assessing potential emotional and social risk with limited information.
So, rather than feeling empowered by choice, players often experience uncertainty, fatigue, and distrust toward existing platforms.
Key insights
76% of online multiplayer users have experienced harassment (ADL, 2024).
Players want tools that feel personal and contextual, not generic or algorithmic.
Accessibility and safety are foundational requirements, not optional enhancements.
These insights were informed by personas, empathy mapping, and usability testing across four prototypes.
evidence and methods:
what existing platforms fail to account for
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designing for players who carry risk into discovery
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↦ design decisions
designing for emotional safety without increasing cognitive load
Each prototype explored a distinct moment in the discovery journey, balancing emotional reassurance with clarity and restraint.
Design decisions prioritized reducing cognitive burden while preserving emotional reassurance, especially during first-time use. The goal was not to overwhelm users with safeguards, but to surface meaningful signals at the right moments.
Design goals:
Establish trust and emotional safety from the first interaction
Communicate values using calm, non-patronizing language
Enable discovery through identity-aware filters without forcing self-disclosure
Encourage contribution through affirmation rather than extraction
usability testing
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signals that built trust:
Framer is fully visual with no code needed, but you can still add custom code and components for more control if you're a designer or developer.
points where the system still imposed cost:
This is a free, responsive FAQ section for Framer. Drop it into any project, customize styles and text, and use it to save time on support or info pages.
↦ visual system
using visual design to signal safety, not performance
Visual and tonal decisions were treated as trust signals rather than decoration, prioritizing clarity and emotional legibility over stimulation.
Color: Lavender and teal for calm; restrained blues and oranges for familiarity. High-contrast variants tested for accessibility.
Typography: Friendly sans-serif body with soft, readable headings meeting AA/AAA standards.
Mascot: Sage, a gentle guide who supports without dominating attention.
Icons and tags: Consistent, legible markers for accessibility, representation, and content warnings.
Tone of voice: Affirming, calm, and human — never clinical or condescending.
Redefining discovery through emotional and accessibility feedback.
The final system synthesizes insights from four prototypes to reduce emotional risk across the entire discovery journey — from first-time onboarding to long-term contribution.
onboarding
Onboarding was redesigned to reduce the emotional cost of entry, shifting from interrogative flows to invitational ones. This reframing increased emotional safety while preserving autonomy.
Design decisions informed by this constraint:
Beginning with questions around favorite games and genre, to ease the user into the onboarding experience and increase engagement
Increasing buttons, contrast and font sizes for accessibility
Providing “skip” options to honor user control
tutorial
The tutorial was designed to avoid cognitive overload and re-traumatization, acknowledging that many users arrive after negative gaming experiences. Guidance is concise, skippable, and revisitable.
Design decisions informed by this constraint:
Clarifying badge definitions in their own separate screens and placement
Allowing the users the ability to skip or revisit the tutorial
Adding explicit “tap to continue” prompts
Enhancing Sage’s emotional presence to ease first-time use
interacting with data
Browsing and filtering support both search-driven and exploratory behavior. Filters extend beyond genre and platform to surface signals traditionally left implicit — accessibility support, representation, and community safety — without increasing visual clutter.
Design decisions informed by this constraint:
Changing “All PS5 Titles” to “Filtered Results” for clarity
Adding filter state indicators and dynamic sorting options
Increasing size and spacing of checkboxes and CTAs
Reorganizing tag categories for more intuitive browsing
desirability & persuasion
Contribution is framed as care, not labor. Value-based badges (e.g., “Access Ally”) affirm the impact of participation without relying on competitive mechanics.
The primary updates based on feedback included:
Linking feedback to specific games for better clarity
Clarifying the emotional purpose of each badge
Standardizing validation language to avoid uneven emotional reinforcement
in conclusion
The final system reduces harm, restores agency, and lowers the emotional cost of discovery. Every decision — from contrast ratios to copy tone — was shaped by real user input and grounded in the emotional realities of marginalized players. The result is not just a usable platform, but one that communicates respect.
↦ from here:
what makes Joystick meaningfully different:
Rather than optimizing for engagement or scale, Joystick prioritizes lived experience. Emotional design, inclusive filtering, and values-based incentives work together to build trust.
what this enables next:
Future iterations will explore micro-interactions, expanded profiles, and deeper community contribution, alongside testing with disabled, neurodivergent, and caregiving players.
lessons learned:
Designing for emotion requires restraint. It demands clarity, humility, and a willingness to slow systems down.
Inclusion is built through small decisions: opt-outs, plain language, accessible defaults, and moments of affirmation. When these choices are embedded early, trust follows.
Gamification can be healing when it reflects values rather than extracting behavior. And listening — truly listening — remains the most effective design tool available.
Joystick began as an idea, but became a statement about what discovery systems owe the people who use them.
