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Abstract: An R &D project with MDA and Magnetar Games to design a distributed , collaborative simulator for training emergency managers, such as police and fire chiefs, to respond to crisis situations. Designed an intuitive interface required the acquisition of domain specific knowledge about emergency systems, response and management. Rapid prototyping of this complex system was necessary given time constraints resulting from the 2010 Winter Olympic games.

Contribute as: Lead UX Designer

Solution: The software functional requirements was defined through interviews with emergency managers and competitive analysis in the area of emergency management simulation. Existing solutions in this area required cumbersome paper or expensive physical simulations. In designing the complex interactions for emergency management control, I was inspired by real time strategy games since they provide the user with the information necessary to evaluate a situation and the controls required to provide an appropriate response.

Results: RCreated high fidelity mock-ups to demo to the Vancouver police chief and received very positive feedback from Srgt. Tim Kain (the RCMP in charge of 2010 Olympic Games Security)

Abstract: The Quest system was an extensive, multi-faceted and long term project to produce a authoring system for simulation and game development. When I joined this project, many elements of the functionality had not been defined and my responsibility was to move it beyond mere concepts and to produce a concrete, high-level design.

Contribute as: Lead UX Designer

Solution: My first step was to define the scope of the Quest project, which had grown beyond the teams’ capacity, using literature research and competitive analysis as well as interviews with target user groups. The overall interface had to be designed with an eye to the future, flexible enough that it could adapt to the changing requirements of project. To handle the complexities of this system, I created the "Perspective" interface based breaking down the system by the roles of a game development project.

Results: My interaction designs served for a long time after I left Magnetar as the sole basis for demonstrating Quest’s grand vision to various interested game development companies.