Honor of Kings
How to create a better game experience for players?
As a Game Interaction Designer on the Honor of Kings UX team, I translated game design requirements into detailed interaction documentation. I collaborated closely with visual and development teams to ensure high-quality implementation, while also optimizing the UX of existing features and contributing to the development of design standards.
INTRO
Honor of Kings
Honor of Kings is a globally successful 5v5 mobile MOBA known for its strategic depth and diverse hero roster. The project I worked on focuses on the International Version, which adapts the core gameplay for a broader global audience.
HOK (Honor of Kings) is the international version of Wang Zhe Rong Yao (王者荣耀), while AOV (Arena of Valor) is tailored for Southeast Asia with more independent content and earlier release. During my internship, I handled game-design requests for both versions at the same time.
ROLE
Game Interaction Designer
The development process starts with the Game Planning team, who proposes iterative requirements for gameplay, systems, and events.
As the Interaction Designer, I act as the bridge across teams—interpreting planning requirements, translating them into clear interaction specifications, and defining user flows and interface structures. These documents guide both visual and development teams to ensure accurate implementation.
I also need to refine existing features and establish design guidelines to maintain a consistent and high-quality user experience.
1ST REQUIREMENT
Event Lobby Revamp
This task started as a self-driven UX improvement. While using the existing Event Center, I noticed that frequent content updates were causing the HOK interface—especially the top tab bar—to become increasingly crowded, reducing overall clarity and browsing efficiency.
These early observations prompted to investigate how the Event Center’s structure could be improved.
PROBLEM
Fragmented Layout and Inconsistent Frameworks
The current Event Center layouts in HOK and AOV differ significantly, leading to the difficulty of reusing art assets. In HOK, frequent content updates have caused the top tab bar to become increasingly crowded, limiting space for browsing and reducing overall clarity. At the same time, switching between multiple lists makes it harder for players to quickly find key events.
These issues highlight the need for a unified structure that presents content more clearly and supports more efficient player engagement.
GOAL
Optimizing the Interface Structure
To address these issues, I aimed to refine the information structure and create a clearer, more efficient browsing experience.
At the same time, by unifying the framework between HOK and AOV at a level that players can accept, the redesign enables efficient reuse of designs and assets without maintaining two separate versions.
With these goals in mind, the focus of the redesign was improving tab-space efficiency, enhancing event visibility, and simplifying overall navigation.
REDESIGN
The New Event Lobby
Top Tab — Anchor Events & Daily Events
The original top tabs are restructured into left Anchor Events and right Daily Events, allowing players to switch between event lists. The left side displays anchor-event icons and backgrounds, while the right side shows daily-reward icons and default backgrounds. Swipe up or down to see more items.
Bottom Tab — Discover
Merge the original Community and Announcements sections, and position Discover as a standalone bottom-bar entry. By tapping it the activity center page will be redirected to another independent page.
Notifications and Indicators
The activity-notification badge system consists of two types: the default red-dot indicator and event-specific logo-style badges.
Notifications and Highlight States
Based on the updates made to the HOK Event Lobby, I kept AOV’s original four-category structure to avoid causing discomfort from drastic layout changes. At the same time, I aligned the item card sizes with HOK to enable consistent art-asset reuse across both projects.
2ND REQUIREMENT
Onboarding Experience Optimization
AOV faces a large population of MOBA-experienced players in its self-publishing regions, so the onboarding experience needs to be more streamlined and aligned with their expectations. Therefore, we aimed to provide a more flexible first-time flow while improving new-player retention.
GOAL
Product Positioning & Design Summary
FLOW
New Player Onboarding Flow
Key design focus lies in optimizing the onboarding flow by adding a Skip Tutorial option and enhancing the New Player Reward pop-ups, further improving the overall first-time user experience.
DESIGN 1
Start or Skip the Tutorial
Players entering the game for the first time will see a proficiency selection screen, where they can choose to go through the beginner tutorial or skip it and proceed directly to the advanced setup.
TUTORIAL MATCH
ADVANCED SETUP
DESIGN 2
New Player Reward Pop-up
User research data shows that new players who complete two matches early on have significantly higher retention. Based on this, we designed the new player reward pop-up to appear twice.
The first pop-up highlights the first hero reward, cannot be closed, and forces to guide players into their first match, with the reward granted immediately afterward.
The second pop-up presents the second hero reward and can be closed. It appears when players return to the main lobby after their first match, aiming to encourage a second game without interrupting their desire to explore.
FIRST TIME
SECOND TIME
