About me

I started out as an illustrator with an eclectic portfolio. I painted, did graphic design and dabbled in animation. In illustration, that was a problem because clients wanted a predictable style. Then someone told me game studios needed multi-skilled people like me. People who could adapt to different game styles and understand art and layout. I emailed nearly every developer in the UK and landed an internship. Suddenly, I was designing characters, creating concept art, building interfaces and animating them. 

My broad interests had been a negative in one context, but in another, they were exactly what studios needed.

Early on, I worked at a small studio and shipped around eight games in my first year. I went from concept to launch again and again, learning how to scale the work to the time available. I learned where to cut, where polish matters, and how to ship projects.

Over time, I became more interested in why things worked than in how they looked. First, I asked why a screen needed to exist. Then why a flow needed to exist. Then why the product needed to exist at all.

As I moved to bigger studios, teams often asked me to make a feature “work”. Usually I couldn’t “UX” my way out of it, because the feature didn’t fit the game’s overall experience. So I’d work with the team to step back. We’d use analytics, player research and benchmarking to find the real problem and the opportunities around it. “What problem are you trying to solve, and why?” became a bit of a catchphrase. Eventually, teams started answering it before I’d asked.

That’s where zooming out came from. Once you understand the big picture, the next steps become easier to see.

I moved into product to work closer to those decisions. Games taught me to find the core experience, make it frictionless and give people a reason to come back. Zooming out makes sure it’s the right experience to build in the first place.