An intelligent system that felt broken
Guangzai are AI-driven companions that live, work, and have needs inside a player's homeland. Their behaviour is governed by a state machine — invisible to players by default. When a Guangzai stopped working mid-task, wandered off, or collapsed, players had no explanation. Without understanding why, they assumed bugs rather than intelligence. Trust broke down.
The scale made it harder: at full capacity, a player manages up to 20 Guangzai simultaneously, each running independent AI with separate states and priorities. The challenge wasn't designing one character — it was designing legibility across an entire system.
"The AI behaviour was real and working correctly. The design problem was making players feel that — rather than feel abandoned by it."
Both the logic and the interface
Most UX designers inherit a system and design the surface. Here I owned both. I defined the AI priority hierarchy — the rules governing which states take precedence and how urgently players need to respond — then designed the UX layer that communicated those rules in real time.
This maps directly to the challenge facing any AI product: how do you make autonomous system behaviour legible, trustworthy, and actionable for the people depending on it?
Designed the three-tier priority system governing how Guangzai states are weighted, which states override others, and how the system escalates when needs go unmet.
Designed how each priority level appears in the world — through bubbles, icons, animation, and the management interface — so players can read the system at a glance.
Three levels. One clear system.
With 20 Guangzai running simultaneously, players can't respond to everything. The hierarchy ensures critical states are impossible to miss while ambient states are safely ignorable — players develop intuition without consciously learning it.
| Level | Name | When it fires | Visual treatment |
|---|---|---|---|
| L3 | Alert | Critical state. All tasks stop. Needs bathroom · Starving · Fainting · Facility at capacity |
Red, pulsing, prominent bubble. Visible at distance as icon only. |
| L2 | Notice | Affects behaviour, not critical. Hungry · Tired · Dreaming · Facility nearly full |
Elevated icon, mid-level animation. Not shown at distance. |
| L1 | Ambient | Normal. No action required. Socialising · Resting · Entertainment |
Small subtle icon. No animation. Not shown at distance. |
Making character states readable in the world
Each Guangzai has three core needs — energy, food, and mood — that deplete over time. I designed how each state appears in-world at different priority levels. The hardest problem: dreaming and fainting look visually similar but require completely different responses. Getting that distinction wrong breaks the entire trust model.
When the environment needs attention
Separate from character needs, facilities — bathrooms, beds, entertainment areas — also have states. I designed a distinct alert system for facilities so players can immediately distinguish between "my Guangzai has a problem" and "my facility has a problem."
"The split between character alerts and facility alerts was deliberate — players need to know not just that something is wrong, but where the problem actually lives."
From alert to understanding to action
In-world bubbles signal that something is happening. The status screen tells players exactly what — and gives them the tools to respond. I designed the full flow: needs meters, contextual action menus, feeding, empty states, and post-action confirmation.
The full roster view
Players need a dedicated overview to see all their Guangzai — who's working, who needs attention, who's available — and make assignment decisions based on each character's skills, personality, and rarity.
What shipped and what it meant
The Guangzai system shipped during beta and became a core differentiator of the Aostar homeland experience. The L1/L2/L3 priority framework became the reference standard for all subsequent state-based UI across the project.
