Building a Data Dashboard for Magic: The Gathering: Initial Design Considerations

TL;DR

This study explores initial design considerations for a Magic: The Gathering gameplay data dashboard, emphasizing user preferences, visualization effectiveness, and practical guidelines for engaging, context-aware data visualization in gaming.

Contribution

It provides a structured user-task analysis and evaluation of visualization types, offering practical guidelines for designing effective gaming dashboards.

Findings

Players prefer outcome-driven metrics over peripheral ones.

Canonical charts like heatmaps support better comprehension.

Localized views and customization enhance dashboard effectiveness.

Abstract

This paper presents the initial stages of a design study to develop a dashboard for visualizing gameplay data in the Commander format of Magic: The Gathering. We conducted a user-task analysis to identify requirements for such a dashboard, followed by a design proposal addressing players' needs and common analysis tasks. We then carried out a structured user test to evaluate comprehension and preferences. Results show that players prioritize contextually relevant, outcome-driven metrics over peripheral ones, and that canonical charts (e.g., heatmaps, line charts) support higher comprehension than more complex visualizations like scatterplots or icicle plots. Our findings also highlight the importance of localized views, user customization, and progressive disclosure, emphasizing that adaptability and contextual relevance are as critical as accuracy in effective dashboard design. Overall, this study contributes practical guidelines for data visualization in gaming and broader insights for engagement-driven dashboards.