📌 Project: Infinity, Club Penguin & Pixie Hollow
👤 Role: Sr. Experience Designer · Game UX Engineer
🏢 Company: Disney Interactive Worlds (Division focused on gaming across consoles, tablets & mobile)
📆 Timeline: 2011 – 2012
⚡ Focus: Gaming · Educational UX · Microtransactions · Child/Parent Safety
🛠 Services: UI · UX · User Research · Game Systems Design
🎯 Impact: Contributed to multiple flagship Disney titles including Disney Infinity, Pixie Hollow, and Club Penguin. Partnered with the Disney Learning Team to enhance educational gaming through reward mechanics and validation loops. Designed microtransactions, achievements, badges, marketplaces, points conversion, and mini-game UIs, while also managing backend data migration and login flows. Conducted A/B testing to improve engagement and retention. Helped evolve Disney’s child/parent engagement ecosystem by balancing safety, fun, and monetization.
Club Penguin
Club Penguin was a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) that ran from 2005 - 2017. The game featured a virtual world that included a wide range of online games and activities.
Club Penguin and Disney's Imagination shared key features like avatar creation, friends lists, and micro-transactions. Using wireframes, we mapped out these elements to meet stakeholders' and product owners' requirements. We also focused on ergonomics, such as touch screen radial areas for iPad users holding the device in landscape mode. Prioritizing rapid development over scalable design was crucial due to the 18-month production timeline.
When building game features, wireframes are essential for UX design, but collaboration with a skilled UI artist is equally important. Team collaboration is critical in crafting these solutions, ensuring the artist understands the vision, storytelling, and interactions.
Wireframed Map Layout
Actual Rendering of Wireframe
Wireframed Avatar Creation
Actual Rendering of Wireframe
Wireframed Choose an Avatar
Actual Rendering of Wireframe
While on Disney's Learning Team, I enhanced Club Penguin by designing a reward system that strengthened the parent-child bond. Upon completing math, spelling, or vocabulary mini-games, children could unlock in-game prizes validated by their parents. This app was available on iPad and Kindle for parent access.
Early Kindle Parent to Child Incentivize App 1
Early Kindle Parent to Child Incentivize App 2
Early Kindle Parent to Child Incentivize App 3
At Disney Interactive Worlds, information architecture was crucial in designing features for Club Penguin and Disney's Imagination. Developing IA flows streamlined actions like creating an avatar penguin or navigating the friends list to favorite or block users. This optimization minimized clicks, enhancing the gameplay experience on both desktop and tablet for kids.
Create a Penguin / Avatar
Data Migration IA
File Organization IA
Feature Function Flow
Snippet of Connectivity Flow