Incentivizing players to invest in hero collections
I designed an end-to end experience and shipped a mobile feature that increased the value of the hero progression system.
My role
UX/UI Designer
My Team
1 Software engineer
1 Product Designer
1 Community Manager
Year
2025
Platform
Mobile
Context
Hall of Heroes
Hall of Heroes is a system where players can work on leveling up specific heroes within hero collections. Depending on how much the player advances the heroes with those collections, they will be rewarded stat buffs that will help them improve in many areas involving and utility-base gameplay needs.
Stakeholders
Product Management, UX Design, Game Design, Engineering, Art, and Live Operations teams. I collaborated with cross-functional partners to define requirements, map player journeys, prioritize feature scope, validate technical constraints, and align the Herodex experience with business goals around hero collection, engagement, and long-term progression.
CONTEXT
Business Objectives
Increase the overall value perception of the hero progression system.
Encourage players to collect and upgrade a wider variety of heroes.
Create clear progression goals tied to themed hero collections.
Drive engagement with existing hero-related systems, including relic acquisition, summoning, and progression events.
Improve monetization and long-term investment in the hero economy.
CONTEXT
Constraints and Limitations
I led the UX design for the Hall of Heroes, a new collection-based progression feature that rewards players for acquiring and developing themed groups of heroes. To improve discoverability, I introduced a dedicated entry point within the Tower of Hand and designed a scrollable collection hub that enables players to easily browse available collections and track their progress. Each collection panel surfaces key information such as collection level, unlocked stars, and earned reward buffs, helping players understand the value of investing in specific hero groups. Expanding a collection reveals detailed progression data, including participating heroes, collection points, milestone progress, and stat rewards. Interactive hero cards create seamless navigation between collection management and individual hero progression, allowing players to better understand how their actions contribute to long-term account growth and power gains.
Design Process
🔍 Research
The research phase focused on understanding the end-to-end player experience and defining how a hero collection system could support the product goals. Working with product, game design, engineering, and art stakeholders, I participated in high-level user journey mapping, low-fidelity wireframe exploration, and cross-functional discovery sessions. This helped identify player goals, feature requirements, and align the team on the overall vision.
DESIGN
Competitor Analysis
I conducted a competitive analysis of collection-based progression systems in games such as Star Trek Timelines to understand how they motivate long-term character investment and collection completion. These products demonstrated effective use of themed collections, roster-wide progression, and passive rewards that encourage players to engage with a broader set of characters rather than focusing solely on a small core team.
DESIGN
Flowchart
Ultimately, stakeholders wanted to create a new feature without reinventing the wheel. That was one of my constraints. I took visual inspiration from the armory section in the game as well as from Star Trek. I kept that in the back of my mind, while I worked on the UX. Firstly, I created a flow chart to figure out how to guide the user through this feature. In the tower Hand, it was logical to add a second tab in the Hero collection section. This was a good spot for the Hall of Heroes to live due to relevancy and proximity.
After creating the flow chart, I began creating low-fidelity wireframes. After showing the team and stakeholders, there were discussions more about visuals and less about the flow. I provided two options for the Hall of Heroes. Option A displayed the rarity of the heroes and stats, while option B showed a progress bar and had a drop down approach that displayed more information such as stats, and heroes. The team liked option A more, but suggested a few tweaks. Option A is closest to what we have in game within our armory. Although option B provided a fresh look, I thought familiarity paired with a new concept is a better way to go.
Option A | Option B |
|---|---|
 |  |
DESIGN
Feedback
The stakeholders were engineers, a community manager, a producer, and game designer. The few tweaks were to display the hero rarity in a different way, add a favorite button, and a details button.
DESIGN
Best of Both Worlds
There was a lot of discussion and reiteration but overall, Option C was a combination of option A and B. The team and stakeholders liked this and we collectively decided to go with the option that shows everything the players needed upfront as opposed to having them “dig” for it. My motto is “The less taps the player has to make, the better. If the player has to tap more then let it be worth it.” The rule of thumb is to think for the player. Option A had too much information,which can be overwhelming, while option B lacked information front-facing. Option C is the perfect combination that shows just enough information. The progress bar was the most important element I thought needed to be shown, so players would immediately know the amount of progress they’ve made on a collection.
Option C
Outcome
🤝 Final Design Solution
I designed an experience that would be familiar, increase investment in hero collections while thinking about potential risks players could experience. It’s expected having players invest in the hero collection might be a potential “turn-off,” but with logical hypothetical guesses I expect for “competitive” players to be more invested because of the stat increases and reward buffs they can receive.
✨ Learnings
I’ve enjoyed this project so much. There’s nothing I love more than creating something from scratch and shipping it off to the world. I expect for there to be problems, but the entire point of UX is to minimize that as much as possible, but also realize you cannot “fool-proof” everything. As a team we agreed to make a V2 of this feature because we want to expand on this by adding milestones and an additional stat.
🔮 Future Thinking
I learned more about auto layouts in Figma and how important they are. Not only that, but I contributed more to the design library. Design libraries are significant because they made your process more efficient. This project also reinforced the greatness that is collaboration. I enjoy brainstorming with peers because everyone has something to contribute and is valuable. We think of many ways to accomplish one thing and it’s great because I never want to shut out an idea. Being open minded while designing brings out the best designs.
