Netflix
June 2022 - Present
Lead UX Designer
Working on Netflix Games!
Relic Entertainment
April 2019 - June 2022
Principal UX Designer
Age of Empires IV (PC): Lead UX designer. Winner of 2021 The Game Awards: Best Sim/Strategy Game and 2022 DICE Awards: Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year. Metacritic: 81.
Company of Heroes 3 (PC): UX support & team building. Metacritic: 80.
After promotion to Principal, I increased the scope of my role to include more 1:1's, mentorship, culture work, and cross-team reviews. During the pandemic it became critical to lead by example: trying to stay in good spirits; never taking critique personally; seeing each other often; and sometimes just talking. At a studio-wide design meeting I presented a deck on memory, cognition, and perception, focusing on how we could exploit pre-attentive attributes.
I had the privilege of working on two unannounced titles from the early concept stage. I learned on these projects that I gain deep satisfaction working in the unknown where neither the problems nor the solutions are obvious. I helped to define visions and hypotheses, then created prototypes to support or refute them. On the later project I was part of the project leadership team which steered the direction of the game and of the team. I expanded my skillset and assisted with UI art direction including creating visual UI concepts and creating PowerPoint templates in our envisioned style.
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July 2015 - April 2019
Senior UX Designer
Age of Empires IV: Lead UX designer. I provided extensive UX leadership for Age of Empires IV including user flows, wireframes, prototypes, user research, front-end development, mentorship, cross-team reviews, and more. I helped analyze what made past AoE games successful and where we saw room for UX innovations. I interfaced with user research and our community council, interpreting often divergent or conflicting user feedback. Later in development, I helped the team transition to a finaling mentality and led the charge balancing quality with reducing scope. I collaborated on multiple innovative features novel features including easier scouting, tutorial missions, and visualized build menus. The game launched to critical success and still has a healthy player base today.
Company of Heroes 3: UX support & team building. While leading AoE IV's UX design, I helped the COH 3 team define their goals, vision, and UX pillars. During this time, I outlined fundamental features such as the layout of the HUD, with new placement options for some widgets. I helped clarify UX goals based on past experience and based on direct player feedback via a community council. I also created provisional user personas by utilizing R to cluster survey data we had collected. Additionally, I helped shore up a design culture of feedback and UX ownership, plus helped hire many UX/UI team members.
Electronic Arts
May 2013 - July 2015
UX Designer - TABU (NHL, UFC, PvZ Garden Warfare, Others)
EA SPORTS NHL 16 (Xbox One & PS4): I led NHL 16's UX design, focusing on improving the efficiency of the main menu while designing new features to fit into a tile-based interaction model. I emphasized more consistent use of UI components for easier user navigation and lower implementation cost. I worked closely with the Lead Gameplay Engineer to devise the groundbreaking On-Ice Trainer that visualizes gameplay information and helps onboard new players. We saw measurable improvements in player learning and retention due to this feature.
EA SPORTS NHL 15 (Xbox One & PS4): this was a transition year to the new Xbox One and PS4. I was responsible for UX overhauls to the entire front-end menu system of over 300 screens, game modes, and in-game HUD elements. Activities included sketching, wireframing, prototyping, information architecture, UX testing, and more.
EA SPORTS NHL 14 (Xbox 360 & PS3): I optimized the main menu structure by designing information architecture changes to improve the clarity of "Play Now" and "Featured" items. I worked with UX Testing Labs to gather insight into user expectations and implement changes based on feedback.
Sundown: Boogie Frights (iOS & Android): I provided UX support for this experimental free-to-play title, helping to create wireframes and prototypes for key areas of the UI.
Simon Fraser University
January 2013 - April 2013
Teaching Assistant - IAT334: User Interface Design
Teaching assistant for IAT 334: User Interface Design. Worked with instructor to design and lead lab activities on HTML and CSS. Gave design critiques to student projects and marked assignments. Students reviewed me higher than the SFU average score.
Used the opportunity to create and deliver a lecture on memory, cognition, and how they apply to form UI design.
I have since had the pleasure to work with some of my former students in the industry!
Electronic Arts
May 2011 - September 2012
UX Designer - EA SPORTS Online
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 (Web): Designed Tiger Woods Country Clubs web feature UX end-to-end. Worked closely with game designers to identify core feedback loops and surface relevant progression to players.
EA SPORTS Arena (Web): Optimized EA SPORTS Arena sign-up experience on the web and on console; GOMS analysis showed user flow efficiency was improved up to 66%.
EA SPORTS Season Ticket (Web): created wireframes for one of the industry's first subscription programs.
Illumo Design
Jan 2007 - July 2015
Freelancing
Created multiple website re-designs including information architecture, wireframes, and visual designs. Coded one project independently with HTML and CSS, which improved SEO and boosted Google PageRank considerably.
Simon Fraser University
May 2008 - May 2010
TechOne Student Communications Assistant
Designed, built and maintained a community website for first year students built on Joomla! that received 3,700 visits and 21,000 page views over one school year. Used ActionScript to develop an interactive Flash game for use at open house events on large touchscreen SmartBoards.
Pwnage TV: e-Sports Broadcasting
2007-2008
Lead Designer
Built one of the first North American e-sports broadcasting communities, delivering both live and archived videos of competitive video game matches. Designed a Joomla!-backed website and drove more than 2,500 registrations. Assisted with technical implementation of some HTML/CSS and CMS configuration.
Combat Studios
2005-2007
Video Producer
Coordinated a virtual team of video editors, delivering more than 10 promotional videos. Captured and edited in-game footage using Adobe Premiere, After Effects and Sony Vegas. Our videos were featured in Computer Gaming World magazine and at E3 2006 on the show floor.
