Case Study: 

Runes Without the Homework

Concept Test & Usability interview (n = 8)

What was the motivation behind the product pairing push?

League of Legends (League) is a live-service game with 100 million global users and over $1 billion in annual revenue. League is notorious for its complexity, so many players rely on third party tools to pick runes, the pre-match choices that shape how a character plays. The Rune Recommender aimed to solve that choice fatigue inside the game client itself.

For users

Automatic, character-specific rune recommendations that remove the need to memorize complex build lists or leave the client for outside tools. It also lowers the barrier to entry for new players still learning the basics. 

For the business

Third party tools in this space are worth over $10 million each. Bringing that experience into the client could reclaim millions in revenue and raise new player engagement. 

The underlying assumptions

Players often use third party rune recommendation tools, which pull them out of the League client and add unnecessary complexity for new players. 

Research questions

• Does a client integrated rune recommender fulfill a strong need for players?

• Does the draft interface meet that need without adding complexity?

• How do players currently interact with runes and third party tools?

Mei's role

• Supporting researcher to the project lead on a 4 person team

• Team included the project lead (study design, co-moderation, presentation), a UX designer (test flow), and an operations lab assistant (recruiting and scheduling)

• Directly responsible for co-moderating all sessions, analyzing the qualitative and task data, and building the final presentation

• Final reporting went to the UX designer and the lead of the Motivations Art and Design team

The challenges

• Draft arrived the day before testing: The finished test flow landed one day before sessions began, leaving almost no time to align on goals. I worked with the lead to lock the interview guide around the core research questions so sessions could still run on schedule

• Priming risk in the test material: The late handoff meant we couldn't iterate with the designer to remove cues that primed participants. We scrubbed the flows for likely priming points, cut the shared screen when skipping between flows, and flagged in analysis wherever priming may have shaped results

• Late stage testing, fixed launch: Release was tied to an ARAM game mode update right before a long holiday break, so the launch had to ship clean with no major patches. I prioritized findings by severity so the team could target fixes that were feasible before lock

Goal of this research

Validate player desire for a client integrated rune recommender and provide usability fixes so the design team could ship an intuitive tool before release.

Spotlight on Moderated Usability Testing (n = 8):

Beginner League players (under 1 year, unranked to Silver rank) first gave feedback on the Rune Recommender concept, then completed tasks on a Figma wireframe over remote desktop. We measured task success, time on task, and think-aloud responses, and rated each interaction by severity (no flow issues, interrupted flow, flow stopper). Each session ran 1 hour, and all sessions took place over 1 week. I coded responses into themes and compared theme counts against stakeholder goals.

Reasoning behind the method

• Pros: Think-aloud testing showed exactly where players got stuck and why, and severity ratings turned qualitative feedback into a clear priority list for designers.

• Cons: A small sample on a static prototype can't show long-term use or live match behavior, and priming from the late draft limited how much we could probe organic discovery.

Players found the Rune Recommender easily

Players liked the interface overall. They felt it lowered the barrier for new players and unfamiliar characters, and even experienced players said they'd keep using it. 

↪ Recommendation

Keep the core flow and scaffold rune education directly into the tool with hover popups that explain each rune.

None of the players realized click and hold would edit

Click and hold was a new interaction unique to this one page, and it stopped every participant. Players also wanted fewer steps outside the recommender page.

↪ Recommendation

Replace click and hold with a familiar client pattern, and cut nested pages so edits stay on the recommender page.

Summoner Spell icons aren’t clear to players

Players liked having summoner spells on the page, a feature they didn't expect. Still, the toggle and swap icons weren't clear, and players read them as something else entirely.
 

↪ Recommendation

Revise the summoner spell icons for clarity and move interactive buttons to more intuitive locations.

What was assumed

Players leave the client for third party rune tools, adding complexity to gameplay new players don't need.

What we found

Players wanted the tool and found it intuitive overall, but a new interaction mechanic, nested pages, and unclear icons slowed or stopped them. They also wanted to learn runes, not just receive them.

What was decided

The design team pivoted toward visual clarity, more intuitive button placement, and fewer nested pages. They also built the hover popups and situational rune recommendations our research proposed.

Downstream wins

• Hover for information popups and situational recommendations shipped at launch

• Released alongside the ARAM update, where players often use unfamiliar characters and benefit most from recommendations

• The community praised the tool at release, singling out the rune education popups. One player called it "surprisingly good," often matching what a third party service would recommend

• Players with a single monitor or lower spec computers called out how much cleaner it was to stay in the client.

• Opportunity areas like copying a teammate's runes were elevated to designers as future projects.