How MMORPG UI Inspired Me To Create A Job Board Website

I used the play a lot of Video Games. I still kinda do, but when I think about it, when I was a teenager, I spent hundreds of hour playing MMORPG's.

Now, I play MMO from time to time, but not very often.

In the first days of conceiving the idea behind findamaker.io I was playing The Elder Scrolls Online, a pretty cool MMO based on The Elder Scrolls lore.

While playing the game and looking for a group to go into a dungeon, I suddenly had a little spark in my mind. Look at the User Interface of the Group Finder tool:

As you see in the small "Roles" section, you have to toggle the roles that you can play in your group.

They are generally three roles in all MMORPGs : Healer, Tank (protector), DPS (deal damage)

And although every MMO has at least 10 different kind of characters, classes and specialisations, every character belongs to one of those 3 roles.

And I was like... damn but that's the same thing for companies and startups ! You can be a print designer, logo designer, a front end developper, back end architect, financial analyst, Project Manager etc. All those "positions" actually belongs to 4 main roles : designer, builder, organizer, seller.

And every company needs to have at least those roles in their team to launch a successful product. In the exact same way every group in a game needs the 3 main roles in order to complete a dungeon.

Notice how all those different games use the exact same UI? That's because it works!

In all those game the functionnality is the same: You toggle the roles that you will handle, and click the button to find a group.

Why would be different for working on a product ?

Thus, when I was building findamaker.io that's what I did:

You click to toggle the roles you handle, and it filters all jobs that requires your roles.

In conclusion, yes, video games inspired me to build a feature on a website. A feature that not one job board has ever implemented.

It's totally fine to have a look at different medias to be inspired in terms of features, User Experience, products, etc. Video Games are a good example because they are filled with incredible UI!