UX Design
While some casual games have pretty sophisticated production pipelines, my time working with one company forced me to look at designing in a very restricted space. While not ideal, I think this is healthy for designers from time to time. While this specific situation was additionally frustrating due to process and structure issues, it forced me to look at gaming through the eyes of a different audience than I was used to while taking a very minimalistic approach.
Instead of focusing on new and creative ideas, my time was spent focusing on every interactive element and movement on screen. These could be broken down into beats that all have purpose and polish. Sometimes I was designing reward flows. Other times it was focusing on eye travel and priority-of-read. Every action and transition could be vetted to improve timing or made more intuitive to help the user keep a low friction ‘flow’ through the game.
Interactive Design
Additionally, at a different company, I spent a great deal of time in high-level design and prototyping. I really enjoy the fast speed, low friction space that more casual games can capture in early development. (Given the right culture and environment). This can be a great space to iterate quickly and have a lot of fun in design.
I rapidly put together decks that captured core design and basic meta around an idea. Pitches like this are rapidly iterated on and collaborated around. From there, paired up with a good proto engineer, we would stand up demos that proved the foundations of the core game loop. The team was very fast and small. Sometimes just two of us (designer and engineer). Occasionally some additional assistance might grow the team to 3-5 for a short cycle.
Core concepts would be stood up and playable in a matter of a few weeks. The team could play and show the demo, proving out the flow or fun in the core loop. This was the first step before driving forward into early production.
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Allan is a top tier talent, in design direction and art. His level of experience in games is a massive help in defining a project from start to finish. Allan is a natural leader, extremely talented in design and art, and picks up tools quickly so he can test assets in game independently. His actions set an example for the rest of his team. I highly recommend Allan, he is a very rare talent that will elevate any organization he joins.
Allan is in a league of his own. Arguably, the best Art Director a company can ask for - no competition. He's able to create an amazing environment around his team and he is the kind of person that you want to have involved in all your projects. Working on cloning Allan right now.
I've worked with Allan on different projects at different studios and I've always been impressed by his versatile skillsets at a project level (design, visuals, UX) as well as his ability to manage and lead creative groups with amazing culture and collaboration. Top notch pro! Highly recommend working with him if you have the chance. Your studio and products will benefit.