From 50 Steps to 5: Improving Scene Import Workflow

Unannounced Project | Designer Advocacy in Pipeline Development

The Challenge: Script import required 50+ manual steps per scene—creating hotspots, copying tags character-by-character, configuring data layers. Typos broke interactions. Missed steps prevented scenes from loading. Designers couldn't reach playable state fast enough to catch design issues when they were cheapest to fix.

My Role: Represented Design in D9Sequencer development. Documented pain points from production experience, provided weekly testing feedback, then validated the improved workflow by importing all 40 game scenes.

The Solution: Translated designer pain into feature requests—automated hotspot creation, grid placement, non-destructive test imports. Time saved shifted upstream to logic validation, ensuring cleaner handoffs to downstream teams.

Impact: 50+ steps became 5. One designer imported all 40 scenes—scope that would have been impractical before. Pipeline thinking isn't separate from design work. Sometimes improving the team's workflow is the most impactful design contribution you can make.