Overview
As a game UXer with love for Bungie's Marathon universe, I conducted a week-long study of their alpha release (April 2025), targeting key improvement areas: navigation, design consistency, accessibility, UI scalability, and essential features. With 100+ inputs from 20+ contributors, I designed practical enhancements that aligned with player expectations and extraction shooter genre.
I combined gameplay footage analysis with structured community feedback through collaborative sessions on FigJam. By mapping interactions across 50+ game screenshots, I identified critical pain points and improvement opportunities without first-hand alpha access.
Through this activity, I managed to output 10+ redesigned interfaces addressing 20+ issues across six key areas: Main Menu, Runner Overview, Loadouts, Factions, Maps, and HUD. Each solution reduced interaction friction and enhanced information clarity while establishing a scalable system for Marathon's future additions.
Dive into the design board and the concept UIs through the link below:
Role
Independent Project
Team
20+ Feedback contributors
1x Designer (me)
Year
2025
Process
Origins
When the game was first announced with a mere teaser, the storyteller in my couldn't resist diving into Marathon's intricate lore archive for hours, making my own connections with hopes to make something out of it. Cut to April 12th, 2025, with the first alpha gameplay revealed, my hype transformed into action.
Multiplayer brainstorming
I started the project by doing a content analysis of all the released footage, streams, Discord and Reddit feedback channels. But UX is even better with a bit of multiplayer, right? I looped the community from all the feedback channels by creating a Figma board and hosted 4 open sessions during the 1-week sprint to capture all the insights. Community collaboration wouldn't work with a blank canvas. So I set up a system.
Four simple categories to distinguish variety of community feedback:
Created a task flow and overall interaction map with 50+ screenshots of the game to contextualize their inputs:
After all the engagement, over 100 notes across the flow and endless conversations on Discord, I can confidently say it was well-received by the community:
Compiling insights into objectives
Within one week of this collaborative study, there were a 3 clear issues identified within the alpha build. TLDR: Player usability and familiarity with interactions in the extraction shooter genre:
Navigation & menu architecture |
|---|
Design consistency, scalability & accessibility |
Genre-specific feature adjustments |
Spearheading a rapid-fire R&D sprint without having first-hand access to the alpha build came with its own limitations. Hence, I scoped the exercise based on these principles:
Executable improvements vs. moon-shot concepts |
|---|
Key screens vs. screen states |
Contents within gameplay footage vs. discussion threads |
Design improvements
By leveraging the screenshots with some editing skills, I salvaged a design system to work on improved UI (some may appear a bit broken due to limitations in available assets):
Main Menu + Navigation
Consolidated the main menu and lobby screen to reduce redundancy + include common interface practices in extraction shooter games
Runner Overview
Readjusted the layout and design to scale for future runner additions + upfront ability overview
Factions (Upgrades + Contracts)
Optimized UI by reducing the number of clicks to reach important pieces + layout exploration
Map
Adjusted the map UI to be consistent with the design + space efficient + added minimap UI to offload pings from cluttering the screen
HUD + Mini-map
Tweaked for design consistency + accessibility (repositioned ping/killfeed, removed item drop notifications, etc.) + added minimap UI to offload pings from cluttering the screen
Main Menu + Navigation
Consolidated the main menu and lobby screen to reduce redundancy + common interface practices in extraction shooter games
Runner Overview
Readjusted the layout and design to scale for future runner additions + upfront ability overview
Factions (Upgrades + Contracts)
Optimized UI by reducing the number of clicks to reach important pieces + layout exploration
Map
Adjusted the map UI to be consistent with the design + space efficient
HUD + Mini-map
Tweaked for design consistency + accessibility + added minimap UI to offload pings from cluttering the screen
Outcome
What's next for Marathon?
This week-long sprint yielded impressive results: ~100 community insights mapped to specific interfaces and 10+ redesigns addressing 20+ pain points. But this is just the starting line!
As new alpha footage emerges, I'm gaining deeper understanding for Bungie's design challenges and decisions. This solo design adventure highlights the value of team collaboration, robust design systems, and proper A/B testing; all elements I'm eager to bring to a professional game UX environment.
My roadmap? Secure alpha access, refine insight categorization for future community jams, and (fingers crossed) share these findings with Bungie's design wizards (get hired? 👀 yes please). This is more than a case study, It's my love letter to Bungie, to thoughtful game UX and the graceful process of iterative design.
Want to geek out about it? Reach out! 🎮