Writing/Interview
Quest for UX: a two-part interview
A long conversation about how I got into game UX, what shipping games has taught me and what the discipline still needs.
The story
Anna Wikström, who worked in my UX team at Hangar 13, writes Quest for UX, a newsletter for people building a career in game UX. She interviewed me over two issues.
We started with my path from designing connected fitness products to games, and how the tools changed along the way, from InDesign to Sketch to Figma, freeing more time for research and experiments. From there we got into what a decade of shipping teaches you: time is the scarcest resource, and the early player experience is the one thing you can't fix later.
The second part looked forward: what makes a strong UX designer, the roles game UX still lacks, and the books and games I'd recommend to anyone starting out.
Highlights
- UX is more than UI. It belongs in the first brainstorm, asking how a feature should work, for whom and why.
- Content can be added after launch, but players lost in the first session rarely come back.
- Players read screens differently across markets. Minimal can feel cheap in East Asia, dense can feel cluttered in the West.
- Game UX needs dedicated researchers and UX programmers, because playable prototypes beat static mockups.
- My reading list: Don Norman, Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design and Celia Hodent's The Gamer's Brain.
