🧑‍💻My Role

As part of a cross-functional leadership team in direct contact with SEGA stakeholders, I defined the product vision for the new Football Manager. We collaborated with the EP to refine the roadmap as product owners.
I led the research and design of a cross-platform UX design system.
We built a rational design tool to audit the entirety of Football Manager’s game structure (systems, interaction patterns, etc) to lay the groundwork for a game-wide rebuild on a new engine (Unity).
As part of the design leadership team, I developed the design discipline and culture at Sports Interactive, especially in helping the team build a Game-as-a-service mindset, with new processes and tools.

📝 Key Takeaways

Refreshing an iconic game series spanning 3 decades can be a daunting challenge, but if you approach it with respect and care, it is exhilarating. Convincing key stakeholders that a gameplay or UX change is important and positive needs to be done tactfully, assuaging deep-rooted fears and respecting cherished memories and habits.
Modeling design ROI and forecasting metrics impact helps, but change management in game design is inextricably tied to the player’s emotional response, not just cold hard facts. Delivering change proposals as engaging, carefully constructed narratives with high-fidelity interactive prototypes helps people project themselves and get excited about the future.

Presenting a refined product vision for the next 20 years of Football Manager to the entire Sports Interactive team, as well as SEGA stakeholders.
Showcasing the new UX design system with an interactive player flow through most of the main features of the game, built in 3 weeks by only 2 designers.
Prototyping core game innovation with a small team on the existing codebase in a matter of weeks, to learn as fast as possible ahead of moving to the Unity pipeline.