During my time at Arkane, I worked as the sole UI/UX Technical Designer on Redfall implementing, adjusting, or somehow manipulating a majority of the UI elements in the game. A lot of systems were inherited upon joining the project, but I also owned and developed a number of systems from scratch throughout my time on the project. This role allowed me to bridge the gap between the design, engineering, narrative, and many other teams. As a new developer working at a AAA development studio, this meant I got to work directly with a huge portion of the team, which I am extremely grateful for as every single person at that studio was incredibly talented, knowledgeable, and most importantly - willing to share everything they knew.
ACCESSIBILITY
As I joined the team nearing the end of development on Redfall - about 6 months before its initial release - a lot of the work was focused on polish, bug fixing, accessibility, and optimization. This meant I very quickly got familiar with nearly every aspect of the UI/UX within the game. One of my primary initiatives was working closely with a variety of teams to implement an assortment of accessibility options, from Colorblindness filters, to text scaling, to screen narration, and many more. A unique challenge we encountered was the digital navigation compliance, as Redfall had a virtual cursor. Along with our support for Xbox systems and controllers on PC, this meant the UI had to be able to jump from a virtual cursor to pure digital navigation and back seamlessly.
OPTIMIZATION
Following the initial release of Redfall, one of our first priorities became optimization. (With the overall goal of 60fps on low performance consoles.) Utilizing a number of tools and systems, but most notably Unreal Insights, I was tasked with generally optimizing the UI as well as possible. This meant cleaning up a number of hard references, EventTick functions, implementing object pooling, and more to bring the menu and HUD elements into more sustainable draw times. (In some instances, seeing as much as a 2000% decrease in slate draw times.)
GROWTH
Starting this position straight out of college meant my primary goal was always to learn as much as I could in the time I was afforded working with such incredible industry veterans on a daily basis. Starting as a interning UI Scripter, I was fairly quickly promoted to a UI/UX Technical Designer after being offered a full time position. Once adopting this Technical Designer position, I took every opportunity I could to expand beyond my usual bounds and increase my development knowledge. In an instance following the release of Redfall, the engineering team was swamped with bug fixes for an upcoming hotfix release. This left a lot of the UI Engineering work that was slated for later releases in the backlog. Not wanting my work to be blocked by this bottleneck, I worked with the engineering leads to get access to the C++ end of things and began supporting the UI Engineering work that was backlogged. Not only did this allow me to further my C++ skills in obvious ways, but this further allowed me to experience the engineering pipelines and learn a whole new variety of skills surrounding code reviews, source control, and more.
Following the initial release of Redfall, one of our first priorities became optimization. (With the overall goal of 60fps on low performance consoles.) Utilizing a number of tools and systems, but most notably Unreal Insights, I was tasked with generally optimizing the UI as well as possible. This meant cleaning up a number of hard references, EventTick functions, implementing object pooling, and more to bring the menu and HUD elements into more sustainable draw times. (In some instances, seeing as much as a 2000% decrease in slate draw times.)
GROWTH
Starting this position straight out of college meant my primary goal was always to learn as much as I could in the time I was afforded working with such incredible industry veterans on a daily basis. Starting as a interning UI Scripter, I was fairly quickly promoted to a UI/UX Technical Designer after being offered a full time position. Once adopting this Technical Designer position, I took every opportunity I could to expand beyond my usual bounds and increase my development knowledge. In an instance following the release of Redfall, the engineering team was swamped with bug fixes for an upcoming hotfix release. This left a lot of the UI Engineering work that was slated for later releases in the backlog. Not wanting my work to be blocked by this bottleneck, I worked with the engineering leads to get access to the C++ end of things and began supporting the UI Engineering work that was backlogged. Not only did this allow me to further my C++ skills in obvious ways, but this further allowed me to experience the engineering pipelines and learn a whole new variety of skills surrounding code reviews, source control, and more.