Kickoff
My Stake In The Ground
Defining the path ahead and earning studio-wide trust for a high-pressure console launch.
Studio-wide UX kickoff · UX audit
Gameplay
A comfort-first experience
I designed the game interface to feel great in your hands, look good from the couch, and meet the strict standards for PlayStation and Xbox certification.
Gameplay & various front end systems
NAVIGATION
From Clicks to Thumbs
With a mouse, you can click anywhere, but with a game controller, one must take a journey. Game controllers are great for continuous scrolling, so I built the interface around smooth horizontal and vertical movement through lists of things. This created a consistent way to explore complex systems.
Studio-wide UX kickoff · Design pillars for navigation, PC vs console
LEFT/RIGHT
The Horizontal Journey
The horizontal axis became the backbone of the interface—a way to move between stacks, categories, and choices.
Character Creation Screen · Early wireframe sequence demonstrating the horizontal journey
UP/DOWN
The Vertical Journey
I stacked selectable objects vertically (items, abilities, buttons, etc.) as scrollable lists with inline controls, designed for rhythm and readability.
Vertical list navigation · First in-game prototype for tuning speed and behaviors
Composition
Design Patterns
Experimentation around layout and behaviors led to a shared design language. The component-based design grew into panels, which in turn grew into screens. By combining panels in different ways, my team implemented about 70% of the game’s interface. After launch, new features such as Player Housing built on these same components and panels in novel ways, offering the 3D environment itself an expanded role as a control surface.
Panel and Screen layout patterns · Screens are composed from panels, these patterns solved for 70% of the game's user interface
Heads-up display layout and metrics · Design mockup for placement, sizing and alignment of display components
Tooltips for Itemization and Player Abilities · Unified system for presenting complex, data-rich information readable from 10 ft away
Outcome
