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Steam Mobile
UX and Usability Research Study
Project overview
This is a team project completed while studying User-Centered Design at Lake Washington Institute of Technology. My research partner and I were tasked with evaluating the Steam Mobile application to identifying problem areas, developing usability tests, and compile and analyze data.
Skills & Methods
Heuristic Evaluation, User Personas, Remote Prototype Testing, A/B Testing, Data Analysis, User Research, User Testing
Project Goals
After independently performing a heuristic evaluation of the Steam Mobile app and developing user personas, my teammate and I collectively decided to focus on the following:
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How might we improve the process of adding funds to a user's wallet and the payment confirmation experience when purchasing a Steam game through the mobile app?
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How might we improve the browsing experience for users who are shopping for Steam games using the mobile app?
Team Norms
Because of the remote environment for this course, Marian and I established a communication plan for regular meetings and ensuring we could check in with each other and our UI Designer, Ryan. We exchanged phone numbers for quick messaging, used Teams for our regular meetings, and used Figma for our notes and document creation which allowed for real-time collaboration. During each meeting we would define our objectives for the current phase of the study, determine action items, divide the work, and set deadlines. It was important to us that we:
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Keep things flexible and adaptable to unexpected changes
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Ensure that we were always reachable and update each other on progress or delays that may occur
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Maintain an open work environment to allow for a dialogue and encourage genuine collaboration
Role
UX Researcher
Teammates
Marian Romero-Govea (UX Researcher)
Ryan Meyer (UI Designer)
Timeline
January - March 2023
Approximately 10 weeks
Tools
Figma, Useberry, Teams
research Plan
Our research process was broken out into four general phases: independent evaluation, experiment one, experiment two, and final report. In the independent evaluation phase, Marian and I performed our own heuristic evaluations and created our own user personas based on our findings. From there, we came together and reviewed our work to determine our research focus areas, selecting two main topics and dividing those topics into two separate user test experiments.
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For each experiment, we isolated specific usability issues discovered in our heuristic evaluations and used those to create a hypothesis to test. We determined the mode of user testing for each experiment and met with our UI Designer, Ryan, to describe our needs for the prototype we would be testing with. The completed prototype would be incorporated into our test which Marian and I would both conduct with participants we each recruited. Results from these tests were then analyzed and findings were summarized in the final report stage.
independent evaluation
Heuristic Evaluation
I put the Steam Mobile app through a thorough heuristic evaluation using Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics. Despite the success and immense popularity of the Steam platform, their mobile app is not as usable as their desktop app. As a result, several usability issues were identified, the most egregious being:
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Aesthetic and Minimal Design
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Visibility of System Status
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Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
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The full heuristic evaluation is available to click through below.
User Personas
To form my user personas, I thought about common user flows that one might go through to accomplish general tasks within the Steam Mobile app and allowed personal knowledge of real users of Steam to inform their profiles.
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User personas are available to click through below.
Experiment One
For our first experiment, we tested the following hypothesis:
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We believe that users are conflicted about adding funds to their wallet when they are routed to a browser to complete the transaction. So if we integrate the add funds function to the Steam app, then we will see users add funds to their wallet more easily and without concern of duplicate charges.

We believe that users are unclear about the success of their purchase transaction and next steps to access their game. So if we restructure the purchase confirmation page to display receipt info at the top followed by next step information to access the game, then we will see users access their purchased games more quickly.
To explore this hypothesis, we decided to run two tests:
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Test One: A remote test through Useberry where testers would click through a prototype built according to specifications we requested and answer follow-up questions in writing to describe their experience. ​
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Test Two: Cognitive walkthrough user interviews conducted in person or via Discord to observe and listen to users move through the prototype and allow them to describe their experience verbally.
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Between Marian and myself, we recruited 7 testers for Test One and 6 interviewees for Test Two, and had them complete two tasks to the best of their ability:
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Add $5.00 to wallet
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Purchase Sid Meier's Civilization VI, then download the game
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Experiment One details and data are available to click through below:
Experiment two
For our second experiment, we tested the following hypothesis:
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We believe that users are hindered by the lack of relevant search options within the Steam shop menus. So if we reorganize the game categories by genre and include a filter or “sort by” option then we will see users purchase games more quickly.
We believe that users are unable to find like-minded gaming communities. So if we incorporate a gaming community browsing feature on the game detail pages, then we will see users grow existing gaming communities on Steam.
To explore this hypothesis, we decided to run a remote A/B test through Useberry. We opted for this testing method as a workaround to receiving wireframes rather than an interactive prototype from our UI Designer. This still allowed us to gather valuable data.
We recruited 9 participants and asked them to review a series of A/B prompts and provide written feedback explaining their selections.
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Experiment Two details and data are available to click through below:
Final Report
Our user testing showed positive results towards our proposed changes to the payment and browsing aspects of the Steam Mobile app. Our revisions took these aspects and applied a more minimalist design approach, better visual hierarchy, fewer overall clicks, and clearer indications of system status.
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Our final report is available to click through below:
reflection
I am grateful for the opportunity to work closely with two of my classmates on this project; we communicated well, stayed organized, hit all of our target deadlines, and came away from this project with valuable experience in the researcher-UI designer collaborative process. Getting to practice three different methods of user testing was fun and gave both Marian and me a good sense of how we could improve our prototypes for even more insightful test data. We were quick on our feet when needing to adapt to an unplanned testing method with our second experiment when we received wireframes instead of an interactive prototype. The lack of time to revise these pushed us in a different direction that still provided useful data. We both agreed that our next steps would be to build out the prototypes further and rerun these tests with modified tasks that could evaluate the payment and browsing aspects more deeply.