What's this about?

Purple Lamp was entering preproduction for Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, a major franchise for the studio. To help the team nail the experience, they brought me in to align all departments around a better player experience:

  • I led a full day workshop on the unique challenges of UX in game development
  • I facilitated hands on exercises that helped teams rediscover their role within a design thinking process

Challenges

UX vs Game Design

UX and game design evolved in separate contexts, despite sharing the same goal: shaping a specific experience. Valuable lessons rarely carry over between the two.

Scattered efforts

While the studio valued user centricity, efforts were often scattered across departments instead of forming a shared, holistic concept that could guide all teams.

The workshop

Know your audience

I use a core slide set for my workshops which I always tailor to my clients. I added new slides and adapted the workshop structure to the game development context, with hands on exercises where the teams could work together.

Set it in motion

A teacher should lead by example. If you're teaching experience, the workshop itself has to deliver one 🫳⁠🎤 My slides use meticulously crafted motion design to keep participants engaged through hours of content.

Double D

I consider the interplay between research and design central to design thinking. That's why I dedicate a significant part of the workshop to the Double Diamond, especially for teams new to the concept.

Bring it on!

I had the teams map what they know about their audience through a card-sorting exercise, which we then used as the foundation for the Epic Mickey player journey. The whole studio tackled it together with full energy, every department pulling in the same direction.

I had a god damn plan

When talking about UX, the focus often shifts to craft. But the most impactful decisions happen at a strategic level, where they can make or break every effort that follows. I placed strong emphasis on this throughout the workshop.

Users hate this trick

It's important to me that clients can work autonomously and only rely on me when my expertise is truly needed. I end my workshops with practical tips for applying design thinking in everyday operations.

The result

The concept visualizations (like the pyramid, the inverse pyramid, the double diamond) are things that will stick, they are superb!

Misha really knows how to make a workshop experience interesting! Would love to see more of their work as examples. "Starts with U and ends with X" means "Starts with YOU and ends with (your) EX (partner)"? 😂

I found the presentation style extremely engaging (especially that the slides often show off the effects of topics that are currently being talked about), the practical tasks were understandable and I feel like they will really help us in the development of current/future projects.

Worlds most boring pie

Purple Lamp's Development Director ran a short anonymous survey after the workshop. While positive feedback is common, it was striking to see participants unanimously appreciate it! 🥹

It's a match!

Much of the feedback confirmed that the workshop delivered the intended experience, while also revealing useful lessons to improve it even further!

See ya real soon!

Purple Lamp went on to deliver their next title. Staying closely connected with the teams, I could see the shift already take hold, reflected in the features they proudly shared along the way.

Hey! I'm Purple Lamp's Development Director! Without any exception, I liked all of it!

Michael Hartinger
Curious? 😺

Experience the workshop first hand! I got so many more suprises for you in store. And the best part: Some of them I don't even know about yet myself, because it's gonna be your very own experience, catered to you!

Let's talk!

NEEEXT!!!