CONTEXT
I spent 2022 having an absolute blast working on one of Riot’s unreleased games.
My personal project exploring what a mobile HUD might look like for VALORANT was what led to my involvement!
I worked alongside senior UX and visual designers, producers, and game designers in fleshing out new features, designing wireframes & interactive prototypes, and (occasionally) popping off in playtests. 😁
Key learnings
Since the nature of this project is confidential and the game hasn’t yet been released, I’m unable to disclose any info beyond some main takeaways:
Get comfortable with ambiguity.
Since this project was in R&D, there was a lot of ambiguity, which made tackling certain features and ideas difficult at times. I kept looking for reassurance that I was going in the right direction, but sometimes there isn’t an easy answer: it’s more important to consider if you’re asking the right question in the first place.
Iteration helps communication.
We had a lot of stakeholders, resulting in a lot of diverging ideas on how features should be executed. At this early stage, UX research wasn’t involved, so we had to rely on existing data and designs. Presenting a broad range of iterations helped a lot in advocating for certain design decisions over others.
The small things add up.
In the often chaotic gamedev process, it’s so important to stay as organised as you can. Keeping track of changes in documentation and design direction helped me a lot, as did circling back to core player goals.
© 2024 Ava Liao