My UX Rollercoaster Ride

My journey started post my graduation in Animation and Designing, and joined Rockstar games as Resource Assistant and I got into the gaming world. To be honest I was mesmerized by the gaming field. Being a GTA fan all my childhood I was fortunate enough to get my name in AAA games like RDR2 and worked on GTA5 as well.

As it happens with all of us, after some time I did not like the work that I was doing there as my job profile was related to testing and animation. So it was the same work again and again. Nothing new, soon I realized I want to achieve more in life and needed a better job profile which has growth and where I can prove myself.

While looking for options in my career I came across the term “User Experience”.?As gaming is all about keeping Players engaged and it's one of the most?successful industries, testing games trained my mind to think from the player perspective. Human psychology was my interest from the early college days. I felt that this is something which I can be good at and I can prove myself as the designs directly impact Player’s life and their interaction behavior.

So, I started reading about UX more and more and grabbed as much info I can online. I noticed that the top designers in the UX industry are the people from different industries who became designers because of their passion. I instantly started preparing myself. Online certification, boot camp crash courses and whatnot. I prepared myself for 6 months, prepared a portfolio and gave a shot interviewing at Moonfrog and I fell upside down in the interview with Alok Kumar (now Director of Product Design at Vedantu), when he told me on face that “your knowledge is just theory you don’t know anything how actual UX works like.”

I never was this scared in any interview in my life. BUT! He saw my will power to learn and considering my gaming background he gave me a chance as Associate UX Designer.! Alok Kumar then became my mentor and a very good friend.

Boom! My UX journey started, First 6 months were difficult but that was the time I learned the most about the best UX process.

1. Why is there a need for a proper UX process?
2. How User Research is done and how the User feedback impacts the design?
3. Why is a task flow so important part of the process?
4. Why is qualitative and quantitative research important at their own places respectively?
5. How to make better design decisions based on the data?
6. Playtest with real players and observe their behavior while playing.
7. Talking to players and getting their pain points and how a simple design can solve their problems.
8. How to present the Design solutions to the stakeholders?

As designers we might sometimes make the world’s best design and if a User is not able to understand it’s nothing. Every UX designer has their own way of approaching any user problems and there are always multiple solutions to one problem but that decision making ability develops with the experience as we design more and more. But never make a decision on what you feel, there should be a valid reason for every design decision is made.

Understanding UX laws is good, but understanding your Users always gives better results.

After getting a good and stable job as well I continued to learn from industry experts. UX Seminars, Webinars, UX Community groups like Rethinking UX really helped me to continue my learning and stay in touch with the UX industry people. I really like that the UX community supports sharing knowledge and helping each other.

Soon, I got more exposure in the gaming Industry. and got approached by Zynga for the UX Designer position and being in the gaming industry since the beginning of my career gave me a huge advantage. So that’s how I landed up being a UX designer at Zynga.

I’m still learning new things everyday. Facing new challenges and solving user problems and that’s the best part of being a UX Designer.

In my usual practice I play lots and lots of games everyday to stay updated with the new updates in the games and what’s working for what genre of game and WHY?

To learn different?gaming?experiences and understand what kind of features will get revenue, what features will increase the player engagement and how we can keep our players happy and satisfied in the game.

Experimenting and learning from the mistakes is what develops better decision taking power. So never be afraid. All the best.

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