Redesign the Social Panel of the Sandbox

Overview

The Sandbox metaverse game offers a dynamic virtual world where players can create, explore, and interact within a fully customizable environment. The social panel is central to the multiplayer experience — but poor notification visibility, limited accessibility, and overall usability problems were reducing player engagement with social features.

Problem

The social panel consisted of six core components: People You Follow, Followers, Blocked Users, Suggested Friends, Add Friends, and Notifications. Despite its importance, players were consistently missing social interactions and disengaging from the feature entirely.

Research

Conducted 6 user interviews and a survey with 83 respondents to understand how players were interacting with the social panel. Competitor analysis covered Fall Guys, Fortnite, and ARK: Survival Evolved.

Fig. 1 — User research synthesis

Fig. 2 — User personas

Fig. 3 — Information architecture

Fig. 4 — User stories

Fig. 5 — Competitor analysis

Design

Starting from wireframes and progressing through four rounds of iteration, four key improvements were identified and validated through usability testing.

Fig. 8 — Wireframe flows, early iteration

Improvement 1

Relocating notifications to the top bar

Moving notifications to a persistent top bar position increased visibility and ensured players could see social activity without opening the panel.

Before

After

Improvement 2

Tab navigation instead of accordion

Replacing the accordion pattern with tab-based navigation reduced the steps required to switch between user categories and improved scanning speed.

Before

After

Improvement 3

Moving the panel access point to the top bar

Surfacing the social panel entry point in the top bar made it consistently accessible during gameplay without interrupting the player's flow.

Before

After

Improvement 4

Minimap integration for friend location tracking

Integrating a minimap inside the social panel allowed players to see where their friends were in the world, directly bridging social and spatial awareness.

Before

Final Design

Add Friends

Social Panel

Followers

Alerts

Alerts (open)

Outcome

The redesign delivered measurable improvements across all three problem areas. Drop-off rate decreased to 29%, user satisfaction improved to 4.2/5, and average notification response time was reduced to 27 minutes — all within a 45-day timeline.

Fig. 9 — Results overview

Fig. 10 — Prototype in action