Design Work Breakdowns
AKA: Case Studies , Deep Dives
I document because production moves fast and lessons get lost.
Future-me needs to remember why we made these choices.
Future teams need to understand what worked.
And you need to see how I think.
How I solve design problems, iterate on systems, and ship games.
These aren't polished portfolio pieces—they're honest breakdowns that show mechanical analysis, iterative problem-solving, and the thinking behind shipped work.
The mess, the pivots, and what I learned.
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From 50 Steps to 5: Improving Scene Import Workflow
Life is Strange: Reunion | 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.
Interactive Cinematic Design, Pt 1: The Point Targeting System
The Expanse: A Telltale Series | Multi-Disciplinary Strike Team
Part 1 of interactive cinematic design series: How we prototyped the Point Targeting System to inject player agency into cutscenes for The Expanse: A Telltale Series.
The Challenge: Our narrative-driven game needed a way to inject meaningful player agency into cinematic sequences without breaking storytelling flow. Traditional passive cutscenes undermined immersion, but typical Quick Time Events felt too "gamified" for our tone.
My Role: As a bridge between animation and design on the strike team, I focused on translating high-level concepts into testable, iterative prototypes. I handled environment blocking, implemented the foundational timing in our in-house Storyteller tool, and executed the first full integration of the PTS with UI and player input.
The Solution: We developed the Point Targeting System—a spatial targeting mechanic that maintained cinematic camera control while giving players meaningful input through subtle joystick-based target acquisition. This decoupled player interaction from camera control, solving the "overly gamified" problem.
Impact: The prototype validated our core design assumptions and established a systemic foundation that was directly adapted for the pivotal high-tension sequence "The Ladder" at the end of Episode 1. The workflow we established significantly reduced feedback loop time for designers, enabling rapid iteration on timing and target placement.