Side Projects

Side Projects
UX/UI Design

Background

Project
Side Projects

Role
UX / UI Designer

Year
2025 – present

Overview

These projects serve as a playground for deconstructing complex game systems and player behaviors. For each study, I perform a comprehensive UX audit of a live game, identifying pain points through heuristic analysis and player-centric research. I then redesign specific features or flows to improve usability, accessibility, and visual clarity, translating my findings into low-fidelity UI wireframes and technical specifications.

UX Case Studies

A selection of independent UX audits and redesigns for established game titles.

Home Screen Optimization

Problem: The current Home Screen suffers from significant information overload and inefficient screen real estate management. Critical UI elements, such as player stats and navigation buttons, lack consistent grouping and proximity logic, leading to high cognitive friction. Furthermore, oversized promotional banners and disjointed visual styles obscure core gameplay features, making the interface feel cluttered and hindering the player’s ability to prioritize key tasks

Solution: My redesign focused on optimizing screen real estate and reducing cognitive load through a more disciplined information hierarchy. Key improvements included:

HUD Consolidation: Grouped contextually related elements like currencies and player stats into unified containers to improve scannability and perception of relationship.
Dynamic Information Density: Implemented “collapsed” states for high-volume areas like the Hobby HUB and Event banners, allowing them to expand only for new content or progress updates.
Visual Noise Reduction: Unified the visual language for secondary features (settings, mailbox, achievements) to prevent them from competing with primary gameplay actions.
Streamlined Monetization: Redesigned Special Offers into a compact, bubble-based layout to increase visibility while significantly reducing horizontal scroll fatigue.

Streamlining Gear Management

The goal was to design an intuitive inventory system for a casual mobile title, ensuring players can equip, compare, and manage gear with minimal friction. I focused on creating a high-clarity interface that balances deep customization with the simplified interactions expected in a casual gaming environment.

Solution: My approach focused on creating a high-clarity inventory system that balances deep customization with the simplified, rapid interactions required for mobile gaming. By prioritizing logical grouping and visual feedback, I reduced the cognitive load associated with complex gear management.

Accessible Navigation: The UI was architected with thumb-reachability in mind, placing core back buttons and navigation HUDs in ergonomic zones to ensure comfortable one-handed play.

Intelligent Inventory HUD: I implemented a filtering and sorting system that allows players to instantly organize items by rarity, type, or recency, preventing “scrolling fatigue” in large inventories.

Contextual Comparison Logic: To support faster decision-making, I designed a tooltip system with green/red status modifiers and arrow indicators. This allows players to immediately see if an item is an upgrade or downgrade without leaving the main screen.

Dynamic Equipment States: I developed clear visual states: Empty, Equipped, and Not Owned, for equipment slots to guide the user journey. Tapping an empty slot automatically highlights only compatible items in the inventory, reinforcing the mental model of the equipment relationship.