Hybrideation

Challenge

Team Hybrideation was tasked by the Fortnite Creative Ecosystem technical writing team with updating the Fortnite Creative and Unreal Editor Fortnite Documentation keyword taxonomy and processes to improve engagement, scope, and scalability.

More information about this project and its impact can be found at its archival record through the University of Washington’s iSchool.

Images of the 4 members of the Hybrideation capstone team: Project Manager Sydney Peterson, Information Architect Madeline Carruthers, Taxonomist Kari Orth, and myself.

Role

As UX Researcher, I led the development of research objectives, gathered data, and presented it to stakeholders at Epic Games and the UW iSchool.

Chart describing the UX research methods. The asynchronous Google Forms survey used closed-ended questions and yielded 7 responses. The synchronous open-ended Zoom interviews also featured a card sort activity while talking to 8 interviewees.

Solution

Since the research phase occurred after an initial documentation audit, I used the issues the team discovered during that phase to create an initial research agenda. I chose a mix of both asynchronous and synchronous data gathering methods to accommodate an important trade show that the technical writers need to attend in the middle. The response rate was over 50% for each phase of the research.

Chart describing 4 main findings, including lack of understanding of why the taxonomy exists, how to use it, separation between two different content entities, and mental models for keywords deviating from in-game UI categories.

Impact

My findings revealed critical information about Epic's product and team management that informed the the taxonomy redesign and the governance plan phases of the project. Additionally, Epic has decided to adopt the card sort activity I introduced to them as part of its regular taxonomy maintenance. Finally, this project earned the Innovation Award from the UW iSchool, recognizing original solutions that advance or improve upon existing processes, systems, or modalities, while producing the same or better results.

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Visual Misinformation Research Group