2021 — 2022 | Case Study / Riot Games / UX is Fine
VALORANT
Riot Games + UX is Fine
STUDIOS
UI/UX Director
ROLE
PC + Mobile
PLATFORMS
01 | THE WORK
Designing for PC & Beyond
From early 2021 through the end of 2022, Eighteen months of co-development with Riot Games. I led the embedded UX is Fine team that contributed across the play flow and front-end experience, working alongside Riot's UX, UI, Engineering, and QA groups on the visual direction now rolling out as the future of the VALORANT interface.
Much of this work has since shipped publicly as part of the visual direction Riot previewed in their 2.0 update.
The Challenge
Bring a live competitive game to a new platform without losing the players already there, and unify its gameplay and marketing visual languages without dulling either one.
“To make VAL multi-platform we couldn't just learn on the fly. UXiF's expertise and our spiritual alignment made for a fantastic partnership over the past 18 months of full co-dev.”
— Paul Belleza // Senior Director, Riot Games
02 | THE ASK
A live game evolving into its next chapter
VALORANT had grown significantly since launch, and the interface needed to evolve with it. The work involved bridging the gap between Riot's marketing visual identity and the in-game experience, introducing motion design and richer visual fidelity into surfaces that had been built for clarity but not yet for expression, and laying foundations for the game's future on platforms beyond PC.
The job was simple to state and hard to execute: bring the interface forward without losing what players already trusted.
03 | THE IMPACT
A bridge between marketing identity and in-game experience.
Two threads ran through the engagement. The first was a cross-functional partnership with Riot's UX, UI, Engineering, and QA groups, contributing to the task-force effort that established new design standards, motion principles, and a more consistent look across the play flow. The second was foundational work toward future platform experiences, exploring how the game's interface could scale beyond PC.
Across both threads, our team delivered visual exploration, UX research, UI design, motion design, and implementation, working into Riot's pipeline at first-party craft standards.
04 | TEAM & CRAFT
The infrastructure underneath the screens.
By the end of the engagement the embedded team was a full discipline force. UI designers, UI artists, motion designers, and implementation engineers, operating on a live-service cadence inside Riot's pipeline.
The version of this work I'm proudest of isn't a specific screen, it's that the team could hold the bar without me in the room.