From Beta to full launch

Marketplace

Designing a community-driven trading platform for Rainbow Six Siege

I evaluated the Beta design and identified a mismatch in mental models. I designed improvements to enhance usability and comprehension, as well as new features for both the full launch and post-launch phases.

Role

Senior Product Designer

Platforms

Responsive web

Tools

Figma, Miro

Go to Marketplace ↗

Project timeline

Beta launch

January 30th, 2024
Marketplace had a great foundation, and was very well received by the community; there was a lot of anticipation for the full-release.
I joined the team

Mid-March
With the full launch just three months away, I familiarized myself with the concept of trading and planned design improvements along with new features for the release.
Full release

June 25th, 2024
+10 million players were granted access. In this release, we updated the grid view when browsing items in the catalog, added a price history graph, and personalized recommendations on the homepage.
Post-launch

September 2024
Following a successful launch, we focused on the order creation process and introduced price change tags. These enhancements aim to reduce cognitive load and assist players in making more informed pricing decisions.

What is the Marketplace?

The Rainbow Six Siege Marketplace is an anonymous, community-driven trading platform for in-game cosmetics using game currency (R6 Credits).

Instead of individual listings, players see data on each item including: the last sold price, current price range, purchase orders, and sale orders to set their prices. Players create orders by setting their own prices (within game-determined limits) and Marketplace searches for the best possible match; trades are automatic and anonymous; unmatched orders are canceled after 30 days.

This design protects players from toxic behavior and lets the community determine item values.

The problem

Markeptlace is not an eCommerce site, auction house, or resale market.

It has a high learning curve, and the concept of trading is easily misunderstood.

It is challenging for players to understand how it works, especially when it comes to setting prices and determining an item’s value.

Methodology

Heuristic-ish approach

Taking advantage of my novice experience with the product, I booked a review with our global design team.

During this session, I mimicked the experience of a new user navigating the product and addressing key user goals, narrating my thoughts in a stream-of-consciousness style.

Throughout the presentation, other designers were encouraged to use the shared Miro board to jot down on sticky notes their likes, challenges, questions, and ideas for the Marketplace.

Visual from UXCel

Findings

Mismatched mental models

During the session, it was clear many misunderstood the Marketplace’s workings and item prices.

Designers formed their own mental models based on experience, leading to two main misconceptions: some thought it was an auction house, while others believed it was a resale market.

What is it?

An auction house?

Despite the absence of bidding history or any terminology suggesting it, some designers believed it was an auction site, a misconception likely due to their familiarity with the Auction House in Diablo III, one of the most renowned video game marketplaces.

They saw the “Current price range” (assuming it was a bidding history) and believed they had to bid higher than the range to purchase the item.

Beta design for item details page

Or is it…

A resale site?

Many designers (myself included) were looking for a number to easily determine how much to price orders.

Thus my lizard brain created the following logic.

How do I get it?
“Last sold at” means the last successful sale…
I should pay the same as the last sale.

(This mental model I had formed was reinforced by the fact “Last sold at” was the first and most prominent pricing element in the UI, particularly with the bold text)

Beta design, item details page

The consequences

Frustration

Having formed associations to an auction house and resale market led to incorrect understanding how marketplace worked.

Since “Current price range” represents the prices of players actively trying to sell the item, setting the price to “Last sold for” or above the “Current price range”, can reduce purchase chances.
Setting prices above this range may not be possible if it hits the game’s maximum allowed price limit, and “Last sold for” prices might be outdated and outside the current range.

INCOMING DESIGN PROCESS

Ideas ideas ideas

It was unanimous the main issue was understanding the pricing and value of items.

Some suggested solutions included:

Showing the average price instead of a range
Suggesting prices for orders
Providing price history to understand if “Last sold for” is typical or an anomaly

PRIORITIZE

Meeting with the product team and stakeholders from R6, we grouped improvements by theme, and balanced this with new feature requests.

We prioritized the following

New feature

Price history

Item details UI

New feature

Usability improvement

Pricing comprehension

Catalog and item details UI

Usability improvement

Setting prices

Order creation flow and item details UI

The backend team had already developed a price history service, so I started with this.

We decided against suggesting prices

One important note

Why? For two reasons

Item value is community-driven; having the product team suggest prices goes against this philosophy

We were still in Beta with a limited player population and wanted to see the impact of the launch on pricing.

via GIPHY

My confusion when revisiting concepts from middle school math

For price history…

Average is the best one of many metrics

Math wasn’t my strong suit, but knew enough to question if average was the best metric for our data.

I consulted our data analyst, who suggested using the median and created a report comparing average and median prices over the past month.

The findings showed negligible differences for popular items, but significant ones for less popular items (due to a trading “hack” used by players to send large amounts of R6 credits to friends).

Given our tight timeline, we decided to stick with the average for now and revisit the issue post-launch if needed.

Just display average…

I suggested displaying the average instead of “Current price range” or “Last sold at”, to improve pricing comprehension, and simplify decision-making.

Easy, right?

However, calculating live averages would negatively impact site performance; and using the previous day’s could potentially mislead players with outdated information.

Beta design, catalog

More research

Aka watch YouTube

It provided insights into the actual worth of items, helped price orders, and predicted value trends.
However, the system had flaws; players lacked context on daily order numbers and whether the “Last sold for” price was typical or an outlier.

I discovered players used excel sheets to track “Last sold at” and “Current price ranges” almost daily.

Why was this data important?

This behavior was different from my initial assumption—they weren’t always solely focused on increasing their chances, but rather in obtaining the best value.