At King I led UI and UX design on Pet Rescue Puzzle Saga, launched in March 2019. Check it out here!
In my time on the project I redesigned the entire UI style, established a user testing process within the team and negotiated with external stakeholders such as our globalization team and font foundries. I worked on everything from high level planning with game design, to final polished UI assets: I even designed the graphics for our launch merchandise!
I was joined by Roberta Tam and Kalle Odegrim as Senior UI Artists.
UI art - I created this diegetic style to bring the player closer to the world of our characters, with nostalgic nods to crafting and scrapbooking that appeal to the intended audience.
UI Style Guide
My first task on the project was to redesign the UI style, while continuing to build new features. Quite the juggling act!
A selection of my references for the UI style. I try to draw my art styles from a broad range of inspirations, not just games.
Excerpt from the UI style guide. I aimed to make the style guide as accessible and useful as possible: documentation is useless if no-one reads it!
I may not be a true game artist any more, but I still enjoy making dumb illustrations to illustrate my points!
Redesigning the Bank
A sample of how I like to work. This task involved redesigning our in-game store, both from a visual standpoint (updating the UI style) and the flows and interaction design.
I started with a bunch of sketches- I like to draw fast and loose before nailing down any ideas.
I knew I wanted to play with our travel/pirate/sailing theme and have a shop seagull mascot. At this point, I dissected our current purchase flow and that of our competitors to find what would work best for our game.
After iterating on the flow a few times, first with flow diagrams and then Proto.io prototypes. I made some low-fi mockups in Overflow and Photoshop.
Protoype of different bank layouts, created in Proto.io.
I then created the flow and implemented my final art in-engine.
Based on data from user testing I continued to iterate on the design, optimizing the flow for improved conversion rates. We ended up with a store that is modern and accessible, while fully customisable from our backend servers.
Font Update
One of the significant projects I led in Puzzle was changing the font used throughout the game. This involved an extensive research phase, collaboration with our internal globalization, legal and marketing teams, and negotiations with the foundries themselves.
With a game of this size, factors such as market positioning and localization to 10+ languages must be considered alongside the usual factors of readability, theme and hierarchy.
How I Work
I believe how you work and collaborate with others is as important as your skills when it comes to making team projects, such as games. If you want to see me at work, take a look at this video interview
I also believe strongly in the power of GIFs, especially to get a point across and inspire the team!
