D&D character creator
Background
After joining a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with friends, I used the D&D Beyond character creator to build my first character. With experience in RPGs but limited knowledge of D&D, I found the tool overwhelming and inconsistent, with little guidance for new players. As I was looking for a meaningful design challenge while awaiting employment authorization in the US, I saw an opportunity to improve the experience through a concept redesign.
Outcomes
This is a work in progress but my intent is to reduce cognitive load, improve clarity and confidence when making choices, and create a more engaging UI that makes the process more enjoyable.
Role and collaborators
As it’s a personal project I'm working on it by myself, though I've had help from some friends who are experienced with D&D and with running campaigns with new players.
Audience
People of all experience levels use the character creator but I intend to focus on newer players as it helps limit the scope and I think a redesign would benefit them the most.
Work in progress
Jump to
Approach
My quests for this campaign
Early on I saw the potential for this to be more than a casual side project:
I wanted to practice my design skills by treating it like a real project, using a structured process, validating ideas, and applying realistic restrictions to balance desirability, feasibility, and viability.
I also saw it as an opportunity to test different AI models and explore how they could enhance each step of my design process.
With quests accepted and a plan made, I got started.
Problem
Finding the BBEU (Big Bad Evil UX)
Creating my D&D character surfaced several problems I felt could be solved through redesign but I wanted to make a more comprehensive, considered list of issues.
Performing a detailed analysis
I started with a heuristic analysis of the flow, noting where it failed common UX principles like discoverability, cognitive load, and visual hierarchy.
Several recurring issues became apparent, including key problems to focus on:
User testing with a new(ish) player
Alongside my analysis, I asked my wife (who has limited D&D experience) to create a character:
I observed her interactions and documented moments of confusion, hesitation, and friction. While some uncertainty was expected, several additional pain points emerged:
Browsing classes (and species) was really awkward for her as opening the "Confirm add class" dialog reset the page scroll… but the dialog scroll wasn't reset when opening another.
Setting some goals
With pain points identified, I refined some goals to guide my design work:
Reduce cognitive load to avoid overwhelming new players with too much information at once.
Improve information clarity so users better understand what their choices mean and why they matter.
Improve consistency and navigability so players focus more on choices and less on figuring out the interface.
Discovery
Investigation check (with Guidance)
For the discovery phase, I enlisted the help of Perplexity. It was handy for searching the web and summarizing results for review.
Analyzing alternative flows
My first step was to see how other character creators approach the process. I had the Player’s Handbook and Baldur’s Gate 3 in mind, but I also looked at Roll20 and Dungeon Master’s Vault as they’re popular with the community.
Some key findings from my analysis:
The Player’s Handbook has a helpful feature called Building Bruenor, which explains each key decision through an example of Bob creating his character, Bruenor.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is streamlined. Most decisions are pre-selected, with only key information displayed and extra details available via hover tooltips.
Dungeon Master’s Vault uses a questionnaire to help first-time players decide what to pick and separates optional “description” choices from required mechanical options.
Roll20 has a layout that uses selection on the left, details on the right, making browsing easy. It also features a review page to help players double-check selections.
Beyond D&D wizards
I also looked at wizard-style flows outside of D&D character creators, used by brands like GOV UK, Notion, Airbnb, Discord, and LinkedIn. Some things stood out:
Most show one task per page, making each flow easy to follow and keeping cognitive load low.
Most use big, bold titles (like D&D Beyond’s marketing site), helping focus users on the task at hand.
Airbnb’s Experience flow has a Get tips option, similar to Building Bruenor in the Player’s Handbook.
New player mistakes and reasoning
I wanted to understand what problems new players face when creating their first character, no matter where or how they do it. There were some recurring problems relevant to my project:
Balancing combat ability with roleplay aspects is tough.
Confusion over which rulebooks to use.
Auto-fill tools lead to players completing characters without understanding their features or rules.
On D&D Beyond, there’s confusion about how leveling works and how stats are affected.
The DnD subreddit was a great resource for getting insight into this topic:
I also looked at why new players choose specific classes, species, and backgrounds:
Class: combat style, party role, theme, and simplicity (for new players).
Species: benefits, visual/theme appeal, campaign setting.
Background: similar to species with benefits being more important with the 2024 rules.
Building personas from these learnings
Everything I learned during discovery got me thinking about personas to inform my design work.
I asked ChatGPT to act as a user researcher and fed it my notes along with its own research, so we could come up with four personas. I was influenced by Maze’s guide to user personas as well as a Medium article about how to build personas better and told GPT to avoid any demographic data and focus on player experience, character creation approach, and goals for their first character.
