I’ve been a gamer all my life.
A lot of people enjoy watching sports, following the players’ journey through the league, memorizing all the stats, participating in fantasy league, debating over who’s team is going to win this season… well, I don’t really care about any of that. Instead, video games to me, are what sports are to most people. It's been my lifelong goal to work in the video games industry. I’ve always wanted to give back to the community that shaped my childhood and stayed with me through the years.
As a part of the UX team, we were responsible for creating user interfaces for next generation core console experiences. Projects and tasks ranged from high level concepting and wireframing to high fidelity mockups for both mobile and console platforms. Other projects included design support for various teams, internal design deliverables such as posters, merchandise and event collateral. The main areas of focus were:
On-boarding Experience
The most memorable part of any console set up, is when it boots up for the very first time. There’s nothing quite like it… all those years of anticipation built up to a single moment, so you better make it stand out.
System Illustrations
Navigating through the system is always a lot easier with some visual support and representation. It needs to be clear, simple and straightforward enough to be understood by everyone, everywhere.
Smart Library
Gamers are defied by the games in their library. Some of the most memorable experiences, neatly organized in a vast collection of titles spanning several decades, right under their fingertips.
Onboarding Experience
It’s an understatement to say, that the on-boarding sequence is a very important experience that has a potential to leave a long lasting first-impression. The goal was to create something that could be easily understood by millions of people worldwide, without saying a word.
We wanted to create an experience absent of words. There was this desire, to make the hardware shine, and speak for itself. I was fortunate enough to conceptualize and illustrate that experience alongside some of the most creative and talented individuals from both US and Japan.
First Impression
This video perfectly captures the very first experience the gamer is most likely going to have the minute they boot up their console for the very first time.
System Illustrations
One of my favorite tasks was coming up with the illustration style that would be used across the entire system as well as the mobile app. The project was broken down into two main categories, first - boot up / shut down illustrations, and second - system wide illustrations. Boot up illustrations would appear during the on-boarding sequence, while the shut down illustrations appear every time the console is put to rest. The vision was to create something unique and memorable, so the decision was made to go with a translucent look for the hardware to match the atmospheric system background. For this task I partnered up with a 3D artist from the HQ office in Japan, who helped bring that vision to life.
While the on-boarding illustrations were meant to excite the player, system wide illustrations were meant to inform them. With that in mind, the goal was to create an illustration style that was simple, clean and easy to digest. The final result is an isometric line-art with a semi-transparent gradient to create volume and dimension. These illustrations can be found all throughout the system: settings, profile, data transfer, privacy policy, and many other. Along with the illustrations themselves, an illustration guideline documentation was created for other designers to use in the future if there was ever a need to create more illustrations for both console and mobile experiences.
See them in the wild
The best way to showcase the system wide illustrations is by demonstrating them in their natural habitat - within the UI. Below are a few official examples of system level illustrations that support and accompany data transfer screens, 3D audio levels, and many other examples.
Smart Library
Your games, simplified.
My favorite part of PS5, is how easy it is to see all of your entitlements on a single screen. It makes it easy to manage, download, delete, and organize all of your favorite games. It was an absolute honor to work with an incredible team of interaction designers, PM’s, developers, and project leads, in order to bring this experience to life.
Navigation
Several navigational options were considered for the smart library. The main goal was to provide our gamers with a quick and easy was to navigate between all of the entitlement they owned, games they had installed, and games they have access to through their subscriptions.
Metadata
While most games have a very distinct and unique cover art, it is still very important to provide additional information to the gamer about the games they have in their library. The idea was to keep the game tiles clean and simple while still providing enough surface level information on both glance and focus states.
Grid
Managing your games is just as important as playing them. Grid options is a good way to customize and organize your library. While working on the grid design, things like spacing, section headers and scroll behavior, were all considered in order to provide a uniform and consistent experience.