Below is the most notable UI/UX design work I've done for various projects! For most of these, I also did the graphic design in tandem with the UI/UX.
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RECURSION
Team size: 13
Made over: January 2025 - April 2025
A time-looping stealth game with mentorship from Bungie, Inc. employees.
I was contacted by someone in a team to help bring Recursion to life through UI/UX design & art over the course of my second sophomore semester. We had weekly meetings with employees from Bungie, Inc. to help advise us through the project.
All aspects of the vision for the game evolved heavily over the course of the project. During the first couple weeks, the team had a vision for diegetic UI (in the game world), so initial sketches reflected this. However, after actually trying some of this UI in game, it became clear we needed to move to a generic screen interface - User research showed that playtesters had a hard time spotting the UI at a glance, and there was too much information for it all to be reasonably displayed on small wrist/gun screens.
A bunch of sketches were made of potential designs, and after a vote, we finally ended up settling on the design that minimized the amount of elements on the sides of the screen. Initially, this wasn't my favorite of the concept sketches, but it would be more friendly towards the curved UI I would implement later down the line in the project.
For the rest of the semester, I finished the UI assets, got them in the game scene and made them easy for programmers to adjust. Some effects, like the curved UI, had a lot of hurdles and just barely made it in!
The final sketch, which would become the game's interface!
Recursion's final trailer, by me.
Initial designs and sketches.
More sketches made later during the project's lifespan (bottom ones are the oldest).
Assets made in Figma!
PARSE-O-RHYTHM
Team size: 5
Made over: January 2024 - Ongoing
A commercial small-team rhythm game project.
Parse-O-Rhythm is a rhythm game originally made in a two-week game jam at the very start of 2024 by a close friend and I. Following getting first place in the jam, the two of us who initially worked on it decided to continue development long-term. A Steam version would be launched, and more people brought onto the project.
During this process, nearly every menu and interface has been re-imagined from the jam version. A lot of work was done adding visual flare to menus, adding icons and flavor text. A modular controller navigation system was even implemented, which was an entire journey. But perhaps the most interesting case has been the album select!
Parse-O-Rhythm's levels are in "albums", small "worlds" of 3-5 levels with music all made by the same composer local to it. The initial Steam launch version had a vertical menu, but it did not order the albums by difficulty, instead by unlock order. This resulted in a really uncomfortable difficulty curve for most players, even though you could select other albums if you felt stuck.
So, after some iterating, we decided to switch the album select from a vertical list to a galaxy map. It took a good chunk of time and work, but we ended up with a better looking, more open-ended album select that does a much better job articulating the player the "open" nature of the album progression that we initially intended.
GRAVE
Team size: 50+
Made over: September-December 2024
A large-team project.
Grave is a necromancy themed action roguelike inspired by Hades, and was the project MSU Student org. Spartasoft Studio took on for the Fall 2024 semester.
After doing previous work with UI design on past projects, I was invited to serve as the lead UI designer for the game, which meant creating wireframes, documentation, and scheduling weekly meetings with the art team, which I was working the most closely with. This was my first time having the control of UI documentation to myself, so I structured it into three clear segments: Prototyping, for early ideation and experimentation, Finished Designs, for completed designs for use by the rest of Studio, and Art Pass, a section for artists to put their art over the wireframes sent to Finished Designs.
It was an immense learning experience figuring out how to make documentation quick enough for artists and programmers to act on it, while also balancing school and life in the process. Generally, we would meet once per week to discuss a particular interface, what kind of things the artists can create, what each interface will actually need in it, and if it's feasible for programmers to make it in a timely manner.
After completing a design in "prototyping", it would be moved down to "Finished designs" and text would be written explaining how a UI works mechanically. The paragraphs about UI were color-coded - white for general descriptions, green for technical notes/programming instructions, and yellow for anything that wasn't deemed necessary for shipment, but would be nice to have. Visual examples would also be used to help explain how a part of the UI may behave, such as items in an inventory being squished together if you have a lot of them (image below).
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