Project Haven

Immersive Interactive Visual Novel

Challenge

Design an exciting and engaging text-adventure game to introduce incoming UChicago freshmen to its academic culture and facilitate connection making.

Roles

Game UI/UX designer

Game system designer

Personal goals

Overcome functional limitations through creative design solutions

Game system design to constantly drive player retention and boost motivation

Collaborate and facilitate a cross-functional team to produce outcome in fast-paced environment

Storytell and branding using UI/UX Design

Timeline

2 Months

Responsbilities

Player interaction system design

Game flow wire framing & prototyping

Interface design

Graphic design & illustration

Testing

Tools

Figma

Procreate

Adobe illustrator

Css

Project background

Project Haven is a multimedia role-playing game with 1000+ active players created to introduce incoming UChicago freshman‍ to the university’s core academic culturewhile helping them connect before arriving on campus.

Haven combines multimedia text-adventure games like Twine and puzzle mini games to offer an immersive experience where players navigate challenges and opportunities in a vibrant island setting.

My role

As the sole UI/UX designer on a 20 people team, I designed the game’s end-to-end interaction system and interfaces. I translated a complex game structure with changing mechanics into a cohesive game system that enabled easy navigation, enhanced storytelling and stronger player motivation.

Understanding the narrative and requirements:

A game that changes as players progress

Game background & World building

Project Haven takes players across four islands, each representing a different academic discipline. Over five chapters, the experience expands from narrative onboarding and solo exploration of one allocated island to multiplayer puzzles, free island exploration, social interaction, and reflection.

Together, the goal is to create an interconnected system that encourages students to engage with multiple disciplines rather than remaining confined to one.

To design the interaction experience systematically, it is important to ensure that it is an adaptable system that can work across all game structure.

Working with the PM and narrative lead, I mapped each chapter’s player goal, interaction type, and required features. The experience grew progressively more complex, from orientation and exploration to puzzle solving, collaboration and reflection

MAPPING THE EVOLVING GAME SYSTEM

Working with limitations: requirements, functions & constraints

Product Logic Map

Understanding our player needs

After clarifying the game structure, I interviewed a few incoming students to understand what would make the experience inviting and worth playing.

2 constrasting player types

Interviews revealed two contrasting player types. The experience needed to remain approachable for casual players with engaging narrative without limiting those seek depth in puzzle solving and game play

Puzzle lover

Social player

The system needs to offer both gameplay depth and frictionless game navigation and social interactions!

Design Synthesis

Combining user pain points, feature requirements and project constraints, I listed out my specific design goals as a game UX designer

The interaction system has to:

  1. Flexible
    Adapt across chapters with new mechanism without forcing players to relearn the game system

  2. Intuitive
    Make progress, available activities and next steps immediately understandable

  3. Motivating
    Reward exploration and puzzle completion to encourage continuous gameplay

  4. Visually clear & cohesive

    Give each island a distinct identity while maintaining clear narrative & puzzle layouts

Ideation

Wire framing & Iterative design

I map the game structure to the notebook system to explore how the notebook could scale with the game.

  • Chapter 1-2 introduced onboarding, chapter tabs, and rewards

  • Chapter 3-5 added maps, time-sensitive puzzles, friends, and multiplayer tools

Designing the game flow

Challenge: Each chapter introduced new goals and mechanics, but players still needed one familiar place to understand what was available and what to do next.

Solution:

THE NOTEBOOK concept: ONE SYSTEM THAT EVOLVES WITH THE GAME

Inspired by the idea of a “student notebook”, I created an in-world central hub that expands with the game, from onboarding and chapter navigation to puzzle access, friends, progress, and rewards.

The notebook offers:

Familiarity: The notebook metaphor feels immediately understandable to students

Flexibility: New tabs and functions can appear as the game becomes more complex.

Immersion: The system is very cohesive with the academic theme narratively

Chapter 1 & 2

Chapter 3 & 4

Creating prototypes allowed me to recognize inefficient flows within the interface and systems.Through iterative design, we recognized specific player pain points and significantly enhanced the gameplay experience.

Iterative design

Example:

After navigating through the prototype, we identified a navigation gap within the planner system because players couldn’t easily access puzzles they have opened which increased friction and decreased puzzle motivation.

Iteration:

  • I redesigned the planner as a dashboard that pinned the opened puzzles to allow quick access

  • Additionally, to improve game information clarity, I used different icons to visually differentiate any time sensitive activities in the game

Players can now quickly access unfinished activities without navigating backward through the islands and have a clear overview of all available time sensitive tasks.

Before

After

I worked with the character designer and illustration team to establish shared visual guidelines for color, typography, illustration, and interface

Building one visual language across four worlds

What drove our decision:

For the players: We selected a clean, semi-illustrative stylesuited for college students (in comparison to eg. overly stylized, decorative or childish styles)

For the team: We chose a style combination based on the tight turn around and one that can be adapted well cross both illustrations and interfaces

The system ensures that the art team can work simultaneously to create cohesive game visuals and allowed me to prototype Hi-fi interfaces quickly

Designing the narrative interface

Another essential part of my role in the project is designing visually attractive interface that allows each island to feel distinct while ensuring a cohesive game identity

How could the interface support long-form narrative without hiding the world players were exploring?

  • The core challenge for designing the narrative interface is that it needed to support 50–100 words of text while preserving the environmental artwork that made each island feel immersive

  • I tested three layouts to find the clearest balance between readability and visual visibility

Optimizing text box layout

The majority background is covered up and the text became less readable

The background can be seen but the text box cannot support longer texts

Has a dedicated reading area while keeping the game world continuously visible

After standardizing the basic layout, I designed high-fidelity narrative interfaces reflecting each island's distinct characteristics, following design guidelines shown earlier.

For Chapters 1 and 2 for instance, I incorporated notebook-inspired elements like ink splashes and bookmarks to reinforce the narrative of the island’s academic and notebook theme.

final Narrative interface

Final Outcome

Hi-Fidelity: The notebook

Chapter 1&2 notebook system - Game introduction & Orientatioin (Sound on for some ASMR!)

The notebook in chapter 1 & 2 acts as a platform that allows users to set up their profile, fostering a sense of personalization & facilitate Chapter transition.

Chapter 3 & 4- Puzzle Solving and Exploration

The notebook expands into a central toolkit for navigating islands, resuming puzzles, tracking schedules, and connecting with other players

Notebook highlight: MAKING PROGRESS COLLECTIBLE

The sticker system

While the rest of the notebook enables navigation and functionalities, I designed the sticker tab to give players a reason to stay and keep playing.

Players earned stickers by completing puzzles and key narratives. Locked silhouettes previewed future rewards, while the growing collection visualizes progress.

  • The sticker system targets the player’s curiosity by displaying the silhouette of the sticker, making continued game play more rewarding.

  • Display of progress boosts completionist drive, enhances puzzle solving motive.

*This was proven effective as we saw continuous collection of stickers across 1000+ players and from direct player feedback we’ve received

I designed and optimized the narrative and puzzle interfaces to align with the game illustrators' style, while reflecting each island's unique characteristics and narrative.

high-fidelity Interface highlights

Coral Island-The Arts

Tidal Island-The Social Sciences

Artificial Island-The Math and Sciences

Oceanic Island-The Humanities

Beyond interface designs, I also illustrated a series of art and puzzle assets:

Outcome

Project Haven sucessfully launched under 2 moths and gained 1,000+ active players. The final game system gave players one consistent place to navigate chapters, access puzzles, connect with peers, and motivated continous gameplay. Students came back to campus asking for the physcial stickers from the sticker tab. Additionaly, the interface designs gained positive reviews across faculty and students.

Key Takeaways

  1. Worked closely with a cross-functional team to align narrative, product, and design goals, navigating technical constraints through clear, collaborative communication.

  2. Learned to deliver clear and adaptive design specs and formating to support smooth implementation when working with engineers.

  3. Designed interfaces that go beyond function, using interaction to tell stories and strengthen brand identity.

  4. Led multiple user testing rounds and developed a sharp eye for iterating based on feedback.

  5. Met some super talented teammates and mentors and had so much fun!

Wishes

  1. Design more detailed UI for the mini games

  2. Extend play tests to analyze specific game points that diminishes player motivation and implement specific solutions and adjustments to tackle them

Reflection!