World of Chel Store

Game UX

I led product design for NHL24’s World of Chel Store — a new in-game marketplace that gave players new ways to browse, preview, and directly purchase cosmetic items.

As the design owner, I partnered with production, engineering, UX research, and UI design from concept through implementation to create a scalable live-service storefront experience that balanced player expression, discoverability, and monetization.

Impact

Increased product discoverability by 90%

Shipped 2 months ahead of schedule

Role
Lead Product Designer

Company
Electronic Arts

Duration
6 months

Status
Shipped Q4 2023

Established scalable foundations for future live-service content and storefront expansion

The Challenge

How might we introduce a monetized storefront while ensuring the experience still felt fair, transparent, and player-first?

World of Chel contains over 900 cosmetic items that players use to express their identity, team affiliation, and play style. However, these items could only be unlocked randomly through post-game reward packs.

Players often spent dozens of hours grinding without obtaining the items they actually wanted — creating frustration and limiting self-expression within a highly social multiplayer mode.

Leadership saw an opportunity to improve item discoverability while creating a new monetization path through direct purchasing.

However, introducing microtransactions into a paid competitive sports game created significant risks around fairness, player trust, and pay-to-win perceptions.

“Why lock the gear we want to use behind RNG? I went all of last year being the only one on my team without the jersey they all use.”
— WoC Player

Check out the feature live and learn about the other cool things added to WOC in the NHL24 trailer below!

Defining the Strategy

Creating earlier cross-functional alignment

At the time, features were typically defined at a high level before being handed to design later in production, with engineering brought in even further downstream. This often led to feasibility issues, late-stage scope cuts, and fragmented ownership.

I saw an opportunity to create a more collaborative process by involving engineering, design, and stakeholders much earlier in discovery.

To align the team, I facilitated cross-functional assumption mapping workshops with:

  • producers

  • engineers

  • UX researchers

  • designers

  • stakeholders

Together, we identified:

  • player concerns around monetization

  • technical limitations

  • business opportunities

  • unknowns requiring validation through research

This helped align the team early while also shaping our research plan and success metrics.

Design Principles

Using research findings, I established 3 principles that guided product decisions across the team:

Simplicity

Reduce friction when browsing, previewing, purchasing, and equipping items.

Transparency

Clearly communicate what players are purchasing and how items can be used.

Player Value

Ensure rewards, pricing, and cosmetics respected player time and investment.

Assumptions mapping workshop, 1 of 3 workshops ran over 3 weeks

Designing Within Constraints

A major part of the project involved balancing player experience goals with technical feasibility and production timelines.

For example, one early concept allowed players to instantly preview items while scrolling through the storefront. After reviewing feasibility with engineering, we discovered asset loading times would negatively impact performance.To maintain a smoother browsing experience, I pivoted the interaction so players previewed items after selecting them individually.

I also reused existing systems where possible to reduce implementation scope and accelerate development.

Player Research and Insights

Understanding player expectations

A recurring stakeholder sentiment during workshops was “Just make it like Fortnite”. While Fortnite was considered a leading example of a successful in-game store, I wanted to ensure we weren’t blindly copying patterns from fundamentally different audiences, economies, and gameplay systems. Rather than directly copying existing patterns, I conducted competitive research and player interviews to understand how NHL players uniquely approached customization, monetization, and identity expression.

One of the strongest insights was that players viewed shopping and customization as fundamentally different activities. Early concepts combined browsing, purchasing, and character customization into a single flow. Testing revealed this created unnecessary cognitive load and made character management feel cluttered.

This led us to intentionally separate the storefront experience and the character customization and preset management. This created a clearer mental model and gave players more control over how they expressed their identity in-game.

Early concept merging character creation and item purchase
User flow mapping button interactions and how users would interact with the store experience.

Designing for Scale

Because content requirements were still evolving during production, I designed flexible layout systems that could scale across:

  • individual items

  • bundles

  • featured drops

  • future live-service content

I also created reusable tile systems and interaction states for engineering handoff documentation.

Before: Blanket equip all bundle items onto any applicable preset
“Separating the ability to purchase and customize makes it less confusing for me. When I’m in the customization zone, I don’t want to see things I don’t own.”
— WoC Player
After: Players are taken back to the item preview page, where they can select which preset to equip items to

Resolving Equip Flow Complexity

One of the most debated areas of the experience involved how purchased bundles should be equipped across character presets.

Some stakeholders prioritized deep customization directly within storefront flows, while I believed most players would prefer a faster, simpler interaction.

To validate this, I created interactive prototypes and conducted A/B testing with players.

Testing showed that most players:

  • preferred speed over deep customization during purchasing

  • did not maintain many presets

  • wanted granular editing to remain within character customization areas

This helped the team align around a simpler equip flow that reduced friction while preserving flexibility elsewhere.

Outcome

The World of Chel Store launched in NHL24 and became a foundational part of the mode’s customization experience.

The project:

  • increased product discoverability by 90%

  • completed production 2 months ahead of schedule

  • established measurable analytics foundations

  • created scalable patterns for future storefront expansion

After launch, I also explored future concepts around social shopping, including allowing players to browse and purchase cosmetics used by teammates and opponents.

Final Designs

Storefront

A scalable storefront layout that allows users to discover new items as well as find legacy gear

Item Preview

Players are able to see the full breadth of what the item offers on each of their character presets

Item Equip

Players can quickly equip the items that they’ve purchased without having to enter character creation