Game UX · Bus Bound

Systematic Interface Design & UX Maturity in Game Development

Leveraging Design Thinking workshops and scalable UI systems to drive studio-wide UX maturity and optimize the player journey.

PlayStation 5Xbox SeriesPC

Client

Still Alive Studios

Duration

11 Monate

Role

UX Designer

Tools

Figma, Miro

01. Challenge

Supporting Pre-Production and Raising UX Maturity

I joined Bus Bound during pre-production to support the developer team with structured UX input and help raise the project's UX maturity early on. That meant not just designing interfaces, but creating clarity around systems, player flows, and decision-making through workshops, rapid prototypes, and concrete interaction concepts the team could discuss, test, and build on quickly.

Developer support in pre-production

I joined after the project had already started and helped make gameplay and UI questions tangible early, so the team could align faster around what should actually be built.

Raising UX maturity

Workshops, structured exploration, and concrete interface concepts helped move discussions from gut feeling toward clearer UX decisions and shared direction.

From ideas to testable systems

Abstract mechanics around routes, districts, and progression were translated into prototypes and flows that could be reviewed, discussed, and playtested quickly.

Personal note

My biggest personal challenge in this project was unlearning my standard UX mindset. In productivity apps, efficiency is everything. In gaming, efficiency alone kills the fun. I had to pivot from just 'making things clear' to managing the emotional rhythm of the journey—using cognitive science to balance boredom, anticipation, and the high-impact payoffs that keep players engaged for the long term.

02. Workshops

Design Thinking Workshops

Together with game design, I ran design-thinking workshops to turn open gameplay questions into prioritized feature directions. Each session moved in one arc: frame the challenge, ideate and cluster on the boards, then rate what had the strongest leverage—feeding concrete hooks for gameplay, story, world-building, and progression.

Design thinking process

Prepare the sessions with design-thinking prompts and guiding questions.
Gather answers and generate ideas collaboratively with the game design team.
Discuss, group, and synthesize recurring themes across the boards.
Evaluate the strongest directions and turn them into concrete features and scenarios.

Miro board with workshop questions and grouped management-system ideas

Miro board comparing player value and implementation complexity of concepts

Miro board mapping characters, setting, story, goals, and mood

Miro board documenting feature ideas and designer feedback by topic

03. Player Journey

Improving the Player Journey

I mapped different gameplay scenarios to compare how player engagement and excitement shift across each loop. The goal was to understand which moments sustain motivation, where attention drops off, and how the overall player journey can keep players engaged for longer.

Existing model

Original loop

Players play the core loop. After a certain playtime, cutscenes randomly appear and open up new stops or areas.

Experience map

Active development

Tested concept

Players collect money, see the prices of available stops and areas, manually unlock them, and then experience them.

Experience map

Passive development

Tested concept

Players have a progress bar on screen that shows development. Meanwhile, they can directly see changes in the city on the map while driving.

Experience map

UI surfaces

HUD & prompts
Inventory / objectives
Meta progression
Settings & input hints

04. Prototyping & Testing

Low fidelity playtesting of game systems

Bus Bound is a narrative-driven bus simulation game, and the idea here was to playtest route, stop, and district management systems early with as little production effort as possible. I prepared a lightweight Figma file with static screens and used it in moderated sessions to simulate progression, decisions, and upgrades quickly and efficiently, without needing a bigger budget or a fully interactive prototype first.

Prepared static screens that represented the key game states and progression moments.

Used dice rolls and moderated decisions to simulate player choices around stops, routes, and upgrades.

Observed how clearly players understood the loop and which map states felt rewarding or confusing.

Prototype map explorations

Start state of the low-fidelity map prototype before players unlocked new routes, stops, or upgrades — Map origin: the state at the beginning of the session, before players expanded the network through dice rolls and upgrade decisions.

Updated map state after a play session showing unlocked routes, upgraded lines, and district outcomes in the low-fidelity prototype — Updated map: one resulting player state after the session, with visible route growth, unlocked areas, and immediate district feedback.

Demo / Release version

Tested prototype logic laid the foundation for the release version line editor and stop progression flows.

Demo screen showing district progression, stop leveling, and explicit service goals inside the Bus Bound map flow

Released demo Line Editor with stop list, leg timings, and the route drawn on the city map

05. Driving UI

Driving UI System

I created a matrix of the bus' functions and gameplay parameters, then mapped them against information vs. action, visibility, usage frequency, and the moment in the driving loop where they matter most: driving, approaching, stopping, or leaving. That framework helped decide which elements stay persistent, which appear contextually, and how the HUD should adapt across each phase.

Information matrix mapping bus functions and gameplay parameters across usage, visibility, and loop phases

Yes / Always

Sometimes / Maybe

No / Never

Driving phase explorations

Driving phase HUD with only the most relevant bus information visible — Driving

Approaching phase HUD showing next stop, directions, and contextual driving information — Approaching

Stopping phase HUD showing stop brakes and doors alongside core bus data — Stopping

Leaving phase HUD focused on driving away from the stop with streamlined information — Leaving

Demo / Release version

The four phase explorations informed how information density and visual hierarchy translated into the playable demo version.

Playable demo version of Bus Bound showing the final in-game driving view with production-level HUD and route guidance

06. Impact

Shifting the Studio towards User-Centricity

Instead of just delivering screens, I focused on establishing a sustainable UX culture within the studio. The real result was a shift in how we build games:

Low-Fidelity Validation

I championed a test-early, fail-fast approach. By introducing low-fidelity playtesting, we were able to identify friction points in navigation and systems logic long before a single line of code was written.

Design Thinking Workshops

I facilitated workshops that brought Game Design and UI closer together. This helped us cut through vague ideas and align on a more coherent roadmap for the core gameplay loop.

UX Coaching

Beyond my own concepts, I helped the team strengthen its user-centered thinking so that the player journey became a recurring lens for discussing systems, progression, story, and interface decisions.

Strategic Partnership

My insistence on rigorous testing proved valuable enough to help pave the way for a long-term partnership with an external playtesting lab, securing better validation for the rest of production.

The work laid the basis for several building blocks of the game, including UI direction, the gameplay loop, underlying systems, and the interplay between story and gameplay.

Testimonial: Wow, this was so different and interesting, approaching a feature from this user centered perspective.

Game designerStill Alive Studios

More Projects