Improving Rainbow Six Siege’s Playlist UI

Scrolling down to save your changes annoys me, so here we are…

6 min readJun 1, 2019

I have put in 960 hours of my life into this intense and tactical FPS game but to this day, one of the things that annoys me the most is something that crept past me for the past year.

It’s not the *cough* occasionally *cough* toxic community, the hackers, the nerfs or the incredibly god tier buffs, the spawn peeks…the list goes on so lets say etc.

It’s the edit and create playlist UI and how horrendous it is at times.

I’m not here to tell you that Ubisoft has bad taste in UX and I’m certainly not saying my approach to handling this problem is the best solution. As always, I came here to nitpick and give my thoughts on a plausible way to handle this problem.

So…What is the problem ?

Playlist selection or create menu in R6 Siege

If you’re a siege player, you know what this menu is. Basically, if you want to play a custom game, online or offline, you’re first greeted with a menu where you can either create a playlist or choose an existing playlist, where, upon choosing, a series of matches will take place in order.

The problem comes when you want to either :

Create a new playlist

Or…Edit an existing playlist

When you want to add a match (as shown in the screenshots Create A and B), You can choose the settings you want and create the match you want. Once you’re finished, you can simply save your changes and go on to play.

The problem comes when you want to add multiple matches.

Every time you duplicate or add a new match, the cards, that represents each match, will stack on as you go. For example, if you were to create 5 matches, you’ll have a list of 5 cards representing each match.

For you to get on with your day, you’ll have to scroll past all the matches and get to the very end of the list so you can save your playlist or the changes made to it as shown below.

I had to scroll past 5 or 6 matches so that I could save my playlist.

So the problem is:

You have to scroll all the way down to the very end just to access the button to save your changes, which is not very convenient for the player.
So in summary, it’s inconvenient to provide a button that is essential at the very end of a list, where the user has to dedicate effort in order to gain access to what is important.

So Jiggly…How do you plan on solving this issue ?

An immaculate card system with a tile layout

I took the liberty to come up with an efficient solution with the help of Adobe XD and in-game screenshots.

This is the base idea of my tile layout card system that is presented to the user if or when they want to either create or edit a playlist.

The idea is to make the match card area scrollable, so they can comfortable browse through the matches, and to provide the “Save Playlist” button at the very top, so the player has access to this button at all times.

This solves the problem and it also provides a neater way to represent all the information as well.

But there’s another problem that was as subtle as a pixel peek angle. This was the ability to change the maps without going into edit match mode.

This is a problem that most of us have when it comes to editing our playlist and that is to change the maps without taking a lot of time.

I’m inside the edit menu and I had to scroll past Match 1 and 2 so I could come to Match 3 to change the map

We need this option because we want the ability to quickly change the map to what we want, in each individual match within the playlist, rather than taking the time to go into the edit menu and to scroll down to each match individually in order to change the maps.

So there was only one thing left to do…

This tackles both of the issues in one go.

In the second concept (shown above), I gave the player the ability to cycle through the maps in each match rather than going into an edit menu. This way, you can change the maps and go right on to have some fun in a custom match.

If the player wants to edit each a match, they’ll be treated to the traditional side menu in Siege but with some improvements as shown below.

The edit menu here is not scrollable at all so all the content and items are presented in one go. This way you can make the changes you want for a match and save those changes without looking for that save button.

Usability is important for any player

One of the key aspect of UX is usability.

“Usability is about coming up with a product or design that is easy to use, memorable, effective and satisfying to the user.”

In general, we should provide a product that is easy for anyone to use without a challenging learning curve and we should make sure it’s satisfying and it’s a design someone would, wholeheartedly, come back to the next time they decide to return.

As gamers, we are very quick. We don’t want loading screens that take forever or any interferences that clash with our adrenaline filled joy when playing a video game.

The main idea of my solution is to eliminate any inconveniences caused to the player by providing them quick access to the elements that they need the most in that situation.

In my example, the situation is editing or creating a playlist and the most essential elements here are the Save buttons and the ability to rapidly cycle through and select the maps you want to play in.

By providing swift access to the essentials, we eliminate any unnecessary time players would take that would not be a part of their experience with the overall game.

This is why an issue as little as this can create a larger impact on the player as well as their time and effort, which should be spent on the gameplay and not being puzzled or exhausted by the interface of the overall game.

Thank you, Reader!

I appreciate you taking the time to read this story. I hope it was insightful and valuable! Please feel free to leave your feedback and suggestions in the comments below.

Have a great day!