Upon logging in to Squad, members are greeted by this home page, which can be broken down into six key components (from top to bottom): (1) the menu and search bar, (2) the friends online chat box, (3) a video content reel, (4) an invitation to start a conversation, (5) the gamer’s newsfeed, and (6) the customizable toolbar.

(1) The menu in the top left of the home page reveals a simple solution for quickly accessing the most common and frequently used pages on the website, which are the gamer’s newsfeed itself, gaming-related news, an explore page for checking out what’s new in other games, a dropdown for the games that you play (follow), guides for game information, and squads for organizing your own gaming clans or friend groups. The horizontal search and menu bar is always visible to facilitate rapid search and filtering through advanced, gaming-specific criteria (more on this later). Also present in the horizontal menu bar is the option to convert to a premium account, a night-mode toggle (for those late nights spent gaming!), a notifications dropdown, and a profile thumbnail that brings you to your gaming profile.

(2) Through the window in the bottom left of the home page, it is possible to view which of your friends are online in Squad, the console of your choice, or both at the same time! Gamers can interact and share content with their friends in the Squad environment via live chat powered by Discord.

(3) Below the search bar is a video reel featuring live streams and other gaming video content from your friends, the gaming influencers that you follow, and the global gamer community. Depending on your preferences, it can either feature new video postings from followed users or trending videos in the community. Whichever choice you make, the reel will feature content exclusively from the games that you have indicated you play.

(4) Just below the video reel is a conversation starter, which invites gamers to begin discussions or simply share achievements. This is the perfect place to request advice, feedback, or reviews on your “FIFA Ultimate Team” setup or your weapon choice and modifications in Call of Duty, for example, from your fellow gamers.

(5) Squad offers a newsfeed focused on gaming, which features content blocks containing advice, feedback, reviews, news, developer notes, questions, discussions, memes, live streams and other gaming video content, and other friend and follower activity. The newsfeed is curated such that members receive updates only on the games that they play (follow) to minimize noise, as well as foster deep game retention.

(6) Finally, the customizable toolbar on the far right of the home page features three blocks that gamers can tailor to their specific gaming needs. For example, as a fiercely competitive gamer, one could have a live leaderboard in Custom Block 1 revealing your achievements relative to your friends’ achievements. In Custom Block 2, one could see top news stories in their games of choice. In Custom Block 3, gamers who regularly spectate e-sports competitions could have live scores and fixtures in this segment. The fourth block defaults to a second-screen streaming block, which lets gamers watch streams as they search and browse content on Squad.

Clicking on the search bar reveals the different categories that facilitate the search process in Squad. Clicking on Advanced Filters takes you to a deeper layer of filtering criteria.

By performing an advanced search, gamers can hone in on the exact answer to their question, thereby minimizing the search time for gamers.

After conducting a search, the most relevant results reveal a little more information than the next few results to help you make the right decision and reduce loading and clickthrough time. If gamers have had similar queries, their exact wording appears at the top of the search results, much like in Google, and gamers can upvote certain answers to their question, like in Stack Overflow.

This is a typical game-specific page. A cover image will add aesthetic and informational value to each page. Content blocks will be very similar to the gamer’s newsfeed for a particular game, however, they will not be specific to friend and follower activity. Rather, they will be curated by the community through a credibility system engineered through virtual currency rewards. Sub-topics will be referenced throughout discussion and content blocks below to direct attention and navigation.