User Experience, Personalization, Product Identity & Long-Term Retention
Overview
While the launcher has made reasonable progress in terms of functionality and technical performance, I believe there are several areas where the user experience could be significantly improved.
My feedback focuses on two broader priorities:
-
Improving usability and library management through better navigation, organization, and customization.
-
Establishing a stronger product identity by giving users meaningful reasons to invest in the platform beyond its technical performance.
The second point is particularly important. I believe the launcher’s long-term success will depend not simply on how efficiently it launches games, but on how effectively it creates an experience users can identify with and become personally invested in.
1. Social & Chats — Visibility and Accessibility
The Social/Chats tab currently feels visually disconnected from the rest of the interface. Its permanently expanded presentation also makes it unnecessarily intrusive.
Recommendation:
Provide a clear, easily accessible option to collapse or hide the Social/Chats panel.
If this functionality already exists, it needs to be more discoverable. Users shouldn’t have to search through settings or unintuitive controls to reclaim interface space.
Goal: Give users greater control over their workspace and reduce unnecessary visual clutter.
2. Store — Discovery and Engagement
The Store currently feels more like an extension of the launcher’s main page than a dedicated storefront.
There is little encouraging users to browse, explore, or discover games beyond those immediately presented to them.
Recommendation:
Develop a more engaging storefront experience that emphasizes discovery, exploration, and intuitive navigation.
The Store should encourage users to explore its catalogue, encounter games they might otherwise overlook, and find new experiences based on their interests.
Goal: Transform the Store from a passive catalogue into an engaging destination for game discovery.
3. Library Collections — Automatic Organization
Library collections would benefit significantly from more flexible organizational tools.
Currently, manually adding individual games to collections can become tedious, particularly for users with larger libraries.
Recommendation:
Introduce automatic or rule-based collections that organize games according to user-defined criteria.
Examples include:
-
Franchise: Automatically group games belonging to the same series.
-
Genre: Create collections for RPGs, strategy games, platformers, and other genres.
-
Developer or Publisher: Group titles from specific studios or publishers.
-
Custom Rules: Allow users to create collections using multiple criteria.
Manual collections should remain available for users who prefer direct control.
Goal: Make large libraries easier to navigate while reducing the amount of manual organization required.
4. Genre & Feature Filtering — Functionality Issues
The existing Genre and Features filtering options do not appear to function correctly or consistently.
Recommendation:
Investigate and resolve the underlying issues to ensure that filtering accurately reflects the selected criteria.
These tools are essential for navigating larger libraries and should operate reliably.
5. Library Sorting — Custom Game Arrangement
Users should have greater control over how their games are displayed within the library grid.
Recommendation:
Introduce drag-and-drop functionality that allows users to manually rearrange games into their preferred order.
The launcher should automatically preserve this arrangement and make it accessible through a dedicated Custom Sort option within the Filter & Sort submenu.
Goal: Allow users to organize their libraries according to personal preference rather than being restricted to predefined sorting methods.
6. User Profiles — My Highest-Priority Recommendation
Of all the improvements suggested here, I believe a meaningful and customizable user profile system offers the greatest opportunity to differentiate the launcher.
Give users something they can identify with.
A profile should represent more than an account name and avatar. It should reflect someone’s gaming history, accomplishments, interests, preferences, and personality.
It should provide a sense of ownership and continuity, giving users reasons to return to the platform beyond simply launching a game.
Proposed Features
Profile Personalization
Allow users to customize the appearance and presentation of their profiles through themes, accent colors, backgrounds, layouts, and other visual elements.
Launcher Achievements & Badges
Introduce platform-level achievements that recognize milestones such as:
-
Number of games owned or played.
-
Total gaming hours.
-
Years active on the platform.
-
Games completed.
-
Library milestones and other accomplishments.
Achievement Showcases
Let users select which achievements, milestones, and badges appear prominently on their profiles.
Gaming Statistics
Provide meaningful insights into individual gaming habits, including total playtime, favorite genres, most-played titles, library growth, and other interesting statistics.
Custom Statistics Showcases
Allow users to highlight the statistics and accomplishments they personally value most.
Profile Progression
Create a sense of history and progression as users continue engaging with the platform.
This could include account anniversaries, historical milestones, gaming activity summaries, and other features that help users reflect on their experience over time.
The Importance of Customization
These systems should be flexible rather than forcing everyone into the same generic profile layout.
Some users may want to showcase achievements. Others may prefer to highlight their favorite games, collections, statistics, or visual themes.
The objective should be to give users the tools to express their individuality, not dictate how that individuality should be presented.
Why This Matters
This is where I believe the launcher has a genuine opportunity to distinguish itself.
Personalization creates ownership. Ownership encourages investment. Investment supports long-term retention.
When users can express themselves through a platform, build a history with it, and showcase their accomplishments, that platform becomes more than a utility.
It becomes something personal.
And a personalized experience is considerably harder to replace than a launcher whose primary advantage is simply opening games a few seconds faster.
7. Product Direction — Identity, Adoption & Retention
Beyond individual features, I believe the launcher’s broader development priorities deserve reconsideration.
There appears to be an excessive emphasis on comparisons with competing launchers, particularly regarding technical performance and cold-launch speeds.
Performance certainly matters. A launcher should be fast, responsive, reliable, and efficient.
However, performance should be a foundation of the experience, not its defining identity.
Move Beyond Competitor Comparisons
Rather than continually defining the product by how it performs against competitors, focus on what makes the launcher distinctive.
Measure progress not only against competing products, but against your own previous versions.
Ask whether each major update meaningfully improves the user experience, strengthens the product’s identity, or gives users something they genuinely value.
Technical improvements are important, but they should complement a larger vision rather than substitute for one.
Prioritize Adoption and Long-Term Retention
Attracting users and retaining them are different challenges.
Performance improvements may encourage someone to try the launcher, but they don’t necessarily give that person a compelling reason to continue using it.
A stronger emphasis on personalization, discovery, library management, gaming history, and user identity could help establish a lasting relationship between users and the platform.
The goal should be to create an experience people actively prefer, rather than one they choose simply because it performs a familiar task marginally faster.
Build a Distinct Identity
A launcher should feel like an extension of someone’s gaming experience, not merely another application they must open before playing.
It should be a place where users can organize their games, discover new experiences, reflect on their gaming history, and express their interests.
Stop asking only how the launcher can outperform its competitors. Start asking what the launcher can offer that makes people genuinely want to use it.
That distinction should help guide future development priorities.
Final Thoughts
The changes made so far are generally reasonable from a functional standpoint. However, relatively few appear to address the individuality of the people using the software.
My biggest concern is that the launcher currently seems more focused on establishing itself as a technically competitive alternative than on creating an experience users can become personally invested in.
And that raises an important question:
What will make users stay?
Someone might initially try the launcher because it’s fast, lightweight, or new. But once that novelty wears off, what encourages them to continue using it?
What gives them a sense of ownership?
What makes them feel that this launcher is theirs?
A product doesn’t establish lasting loyalty simply by performing the same tasks as its competitors. It establishes loyalty by providing an experience users genuinely value and cannot easily replace.
Technical performance may help bring users through the door, but personalization, identity, and meaningful engagement are what can encourage them to stay.
I would like to see future development place greater emphasis on those qualities.
Build a launcher people want to call their own, not just another launcher that happens to run faster.