app design
d12 was an app I designed to be used for playing Tabletop Role-Playing Games (TTRPGs). During the pandemic, TTRPG groups could no longer meet up to play tabletop games in real life, so websites that allowed people to play online (such as Roll20) very quickly rose in popularity. However, the user interface of these websites can be hard to use on mobile devices. A major part of playing D&D is having a simulated playing surface to show where the characters are in relation to their environment, and this is especially important when forced to play online, but this isn’t available on many big-name TTRPG mobile apps.
d12's primary function was to create a more efficient experience with the ability to see and manipulate a map and player tokens on mobile devices, as well as provide greater accessibility to online gameplay — especially if a player does not have a computer, and can only join from a phone or tablet. It would be marketed towards a niche TTRPG-playing audience that primarily uses online channels to communicate and play.
The minimum screen requirement for this project was 12, I ended up with approximately 50. The Illustrator file for those bad boys is 384mb—that's over 403 million bytes. My laptop truly was fighting for her life and I still don't think she's fully forgiven me.
Sketches and picking a theme
One of the first things I did in the design process was lay out some color palettes. The palettes I experimented with were based on old D&D handbooks and module covers. Because I was making an effort to hold back on hyper-stylized fantasy elements, I wanted to include a color palette reminiscent of official D&D materials to keep the fantasy feel without going overboard. I ended up going with a slight variation of the palette on the far left. Below are some of the first sketches I ever did for this project.
