Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 & 4
Overview:
I was responsible for making UX improvements to the existing front-end UI. This work involved three types of design approaches: simple adjustments that stayed close to the original design, complete redesigns of complex components, and hybrid solutions that blended both. The overarching goals were to simplify, organize, declutter, and elevate the overall user experience.
Role:
Senior UX Designer
Core responsibilities included collaborating with the design team to gather goals, requirements, and expectations. Led regular syncs to align on UX direction, facilitate brainstorming, and ensure cross-team consistency throughout the design process.
Responsibilities:
I contributed to a wide range of features across the entire UI, from early concept through final implementation. Working closely with stakeholders, I supported key use cases and defined user flows that aligned with the game’s vision and player experience goals.
My contributions included:
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Applying research insights to inform design decisions
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Preserving and evolving existing interaction patterns
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Ensuring consistency across both reworked and newly designed features
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Creating wireframes, documentation, and interactive prototypes
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Supporting accessibility and localization across all design outputs
Approach:
As this project was a remake of an existing game, I began by playing and evaluating the original title to identify UX pain points, usability issues, and opportunities for improvement. From there, I followed a flexible UX process tailored to the needs of the project, which included:
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Conducting research on comparable games and features
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Creating low-fidelity design explorations
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Developing wireframes and detailed user flows
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Building interactive prototypes to validate usability and feel
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Conducting usability studies to validate design direction
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Writing comprehensive documentation covering design intent, functionality, and interaction expectations
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Collaborating with art and engineering in an iterative feedback loop to ensure alignment and feasibility
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Refining designs based on insights from usability testing, playtesting, and stakeholder feedback
Contributions
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Conducted research on the First-Time User Experience (FTUE) and identified opportunities to improve onboarding and learning
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Evaluated existing menus and HUD to surface usability issues and propose UX improvements
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Led UX design for the majority of core features across the front-end experience including but not limited to: Skater Customization, Create A Park, Challenges, Profile
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Redesigned and enhanced UX and usability across all features, balancing legacy structure with modern best practices
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Facilitated stakeholder alignment to ensure intuitive interactions and clear design direction
Challenges
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Navigating the constraints of an existing design framework and legacy UI architecture
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Balancing UX improvements with limited redesign scope on features not slated for full overhaul
Lessons Learned
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Don’t be afraid to challenge established patterns. In one case, I explored a non-traditional direction for a feature that diverged from the original—and it ultimately delivered a better experience. Taking calculated risks led to unexpected wins.
Impact:
Through iterative design, close collaboration, and strategic problem-solving, we delivered intuitive, user-centered interactions that met both player and project needs, despite working within tight constraints.
Key outcomes included:
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Increased usability by reducing navigation complexity and streamlining interaction flows
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Redesigned features led to more intuitive and user-friendly experiences
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Successfully reorganized, decluttered, and simplified the UI which earned positive feedback from both the internal team and the client
The Task
Improve the experience of how players find cool fun parks to play, how park are served up and how parks are selected.
The Problem
User testing of the original Create-A-Park feature in THPS 3 and 4 revealed several core issues: players struggled to find quality parks, lacked feedback on how their parks were performing, and saw little reason to engage with user-created content. The absence of gameplay goals, meaningful incentives, and discoverability tools led to low replayability, limited motivation to create parks, and poor overall usability.
The New Direction
To address the core issues, the gameplay team introduced new systems that would be directly integrated into the redesign of the Create-A-Park feature. Goals were added to park creation to give players a reason to engage with and revisit user-created content. A lightweight feedback system was developed to provide insight into how parks were performing, for both creators and players. Additionally, the park browser was redesigned to incorporate these new elements, with improved navigation, filtering, and sorting to reduce information overload and support more meaningful, player-driven discovery.
The Accomplishments
This was a full redesign of the Create-A-Park feature, aimed at addressing key usability pain points surfaced during UXR testing. The updated experience significantly enhanced replayability and player motivation through the addition of custom goals and improved discovery tools.
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Custom Goals & Search Filtering:
Players could now assign gameplay goals to their parks and search for others based on goals they preferred to play, adding meaningful context and personalization to the park discovery process.
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Park Rating System:
Introducing a rating system gave players a clearer sense of which parks were most enjoyable or well-designed. It also allowed creators to see how their parks ranked, fostering community feedback and competition.
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Organization:
Improving navigation, layout, flow, and adding robust filtering and sorting tools resulted in a smoother, more intuitive experience, boosting player engagement and reducing friction during park discovery.
Together, these changes addressed core UXR findings and aligned the feature with player needs, resulting in a more engaging, goal-driven, and sustainable user experience.
Lessons Learned
There were moments where the design veered off course due to misinterpretation of stakeholder feedback. It became clear that regular alignment checkpoints are essential to ensure shared understanding and to catch discrepancies early. Maintaining consistent communication helped clarify expectations and kept the design process on track.
Create-A-Park Feature Design Process
The Challenge
The biggest hurdle was designing a system that could handle the large volume of user-generated parks in a way that felt organized, accessible, and engaging. Solving for content overload, through effective filtering, sorting, and layout, was key. Once that foundation was in place, the rest of the design solutions naturally aligned.
Image: Original Create-A-Park Browser
Discovery & Define
Research was conducted by competitive analysis of other games with the same or similar feature by reviewing the existing feature in the game, and through stakeholder interviews.
An in-house user researcher conducted an evaluation of the Create-A-Park feature, benchmarking it against similar systems in other games. The findings reinforced existing concerns and highlighted key areas for improvement:
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Ineffective Browsing: Players lacked meaningful ways to browse parks, making discovery feel random and unstructured.
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Poor Content Visibility: There was no effective method to surface new or high-quality parks, limiting engagement with fresh content.
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Unhelpful Voting Mechanism: The existing voting system did little to highlight worthwhile parks or guide player choice.
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Limited Search Functionality: Players couldn’t sort or filter parks by useful criteria, such as theme, difficulty, or popularity.
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Confusing Search Results: Search queries matched multiple metadata fields (name, description, tags), but only the title was shown, leaving users without context and making selection difficult.
Once all data was gathered, a high level summary of goals and design expectations was established to align the team and guide decision-making throughout development.
Survey
A focused internal survey was conducted with players who had engaged with the Create-A-Park feature. Key findings highlighted several usability gaps and areas for improvement:
Navigation & Search:
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Players found the search experience lacking; it didn’t align with expected behavior.
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Search was limited to park names, though keywords were matched across names, descriptions, and tags, only the name was visible, making discovery unintuitive.
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Tags lacked any meaningful structure or organization.
Discovery & Surfacing:
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The browser heavily favored the top 5–10 most played parks, making it difficult for new or high-quality parks to surface.
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There was no sorting or filtering to refine searches or highlight fresh content.
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Players reported excessive scrolling due to inefficient layout and information hierarchy.
Frustrations:
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Clicking on a park immediately launched it, with no confirmation or way to back out.
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There was no option to view or select another park after finishing a run.
What Worked Well:
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The Remix feature was positively received and seen as a strong, creative addition.
Player Requests:
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Stronger discoverability tools.
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Better browsing flow and UI feedback.
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Ability to seamlessly select and load another Create-A-Park after completing a run
Ideate & Design: Early Explorations
Given that the core challenge was designing for a large volume of user-generated content and determining how best to deliver it to players, I began by researching solutions beyond traditional video game features. I explored content-heavy platforms such as streaming services and digital storefronts, including the Epic Games Store, to gather insights on discoverability, layout, and user flow.
This broader perspective informed early design explorations, which were then presented to stakeholders for feedback and alignment. The approach was well-received, and based on their input, I moved forward with iterative refinements.
Ideate & Design: Direction
Once the core design for Create-A-Park was established, we shifted focus to refining the design, exploring the sorting and filtering, and presenting the park details, and secondary screens such as editing parks and park details.
Additional research was conducted to better understand user expectations around filtering and sorting. A small-scale card sort exercise helped surface player mental models and informed how content categories and filters should be structured for more intuitive browsing.
User Testing:
Usability studies were conducted on the final design direction to validate usability and identify areas for refinement. Changes were made based on player feedback, as well as time and technical constraints.
Key Adjustments from User Feedback:
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Edit Park Screen:
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Added a direct Edit Park button
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Filters List:
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Reordered filters, moving Goals above Tricks & Style to better reflect user priorities.
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Navigation Tweaks:
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Moved Recently Played parks to the My Parks tab (previously in Favorites).
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Relocated In-Game Parks to the bottom of the Favorites screen to reduce clutter.
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Label Improvements for Clarity:
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Features Screen: Most Popular This Week
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My Parks Screen: My Created Parks, Unpublished, Last Published
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Search Screen: Clear Rate (in Sort list)
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Details, Edit, and Remix Screens: Updated (under creator info)
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These refinements ensured the final design better aligned with player expectations and terminology, while improving overall usability and clarity.
Finalizing Designs
After incorporating the final round of feedback and user testing insights, the screen designs were refined and finalized. Functionality, design intent, and implementation expectations were thoroughly documented to ensure a smooth handoff to development.
Prototype
Interactive prototypes were created and tested throughout the design process to evaluate usability, validate design decisions, and ensure the overall experience felt intuitive and engaging.
Final Design Handoff
While engineering and art were involved through regular touchpoints during the process, a formal kickoff meeting was held to validate alignment, clarify expectations, and address any outstanding questions before implementation began.
Final Feature Designs
Main Create-A-Park Screen
To reduce scrolling, improve discoverability, and streamline the user experience, a subheader navigation bar was introduced. This allowed players to easily switch between the three core areas of the feature: Featured Parks, My Parks, and Search.
Design
Once the final designs were completed and approved, documentation was prepared and shared with the team.
Information on UX expectations and recommendations were included along with a prototype.
Search Tab
The redesigned search screen introduced three key tools—search input, filtering, and sorting—which could be used independently or in combination to deliver more targeted and relevant results.
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Search Input:
Allowed players to search by either keyword or park ID, offering flexibility for direct or exploratory queries. -
Sorting:
A dropdown menu with three options enabled players to quickly reorder results based on preference. -
Filtering:
Opened a modal with selectable categories, allowing players to apply 1–3 filters to narrow results by gameplay style, goals, or other attributes.
Together, these tools made park discovery more intuitive and aligned with player intent, significantly improving usability and engagement.
The Park Details & Edit Screens
Research was conducted to identify what information players found most valuable about parks, as well as the most intuitive order for presenting that information. This informed the content hierarchy and layout across these key screens to better align with player expectations.
Release
A few screen shots of the final implemented and released feature.
Create-A-Park Feature Overview: