A. In the first part of this case study, I am discussing why a recommender system for boardgames solves both a business and user problem, and why this is a worthwhile
B. Second, I will look at recommender systems for adjacent items (books, movies).
C. Third, I will share my research and design process about the board game recommender interface.
A. The Problem: Purchasing games without adequate research is risky for the consumer –
A common- and sometimes surprisingly challenging- issue is finding the right game to play. Many in the board gaming community complain about the difficulty, and predictably, users have come up with several workarounds, such as posting questions in Facebook groups, however, the problem persists. Here it is in a nutshell – a user problem that leads to a significant business problem.
Selecting games is similar to selecting books in that:
- Myriads of games/books to choose from
- Owning games/books does not mean you don’t need more
- There are well-defined personal preferences in terms of content, style, story building, etc.
While in many ways identifying the right game is similar to picking out the right book, game selection is riskier:
- Brick-and-mortar bookstores allow you to open the volume and read as many pages as you want or download a sample for an ebook.
- Books are also significantly cheaper
- Books can be returned even once you open them.
Board gaming is big business, so the opportunity here is significant, too.
The US makes more revenue from board games than any other country ($2.48 billion), followed by China ($1.10 billion) and Japan ($0.46 billion).1
I collected data from 51 respondents through a survey I posted on board game community pages on Facebook.
The three main learnings from my foundational research are:
- Two-thirds of surveyed consumers feel compelled to invest significant time and effort researching games, often turning to specialty websites like boardgamegeek.com. Most enthusiasts neither consult sales associates nor rely solely on packaging information. Based on the numbers, just as many users look at the information on the packaging as they do in-depth research.
- The extent of research consumers undertake is directly related to the game’s price – the more expensive the game, the more thorough their investigation before purchasing. Therefore, when designing detailed product information pages, it’s important to prioritize high-value games.
- My competitive analysis reveals that most game store websites lack sufficient information about the games they offer, making it difficult for consumers to easily learn about the games available in the store.
B. Design inspiration from online book stores and book-recommending websites
Book vendors (and Netflix) have already solved this very same problem, making it easy for readers to find their next book, either based on ratings of previously read books, or on preferences. Goodreads.com and Whattoreadnext.com are two well-known examples, and so is Amazon’s experimental “Customers Also Bought or Read”. So, I am going to look at how book- and movie recommender systems solved for this problem.
Here are a few examples:
WIREFRAMES AND HIIGH FIDELITY DESIGNS WILL BE DISPLAYED HERE IN A FEW DAYS
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