Improving work efficiency
Designing for tech
The Avalanche development team was accustomed to using multiple third-party services to accomplish tasks that their envisioned Build Manager could handle on its own.
This required designing a web application that could seamlessly integrate key features from various existing products while preserving the behaviours and workflows the team was already familiar with - we needed to minimize disruption to their workflow when transitioning to the new Build Manager.
The main goal in designing this product was to make searching, filtering, and performing quick actions on specific builds as seamless as possible. We were dealing with thousands of files and folders per game, with their relevance varying based on user type, branch, platform, sets, and other factors.
Another key feature was the design of automated workflows through API integrations. My previous work on the API Suite project was instrumental in crafting a simple solution to streamline the configuration of these integrations and automations.
key takeaways
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Continuously learning new things: another project, another area of expertise I had no prior knowledge of. There were plenty of “What’s this?”, “What’s that?”, and “What’s this and that?” moments. The Build Manager had highly technical requirements, guidelines, and terminology that were completely unfamiliar to me at first. Fortunately, Avalanche Studios’ excellent documentation and open communication made it much easier to acquire the knowledge needed to design the product.
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A tool for everyone. The Build Manager is designed as a central part of the game development process, providing access to users with different roles, goals, and levels of expertise to perform specific tasks based on their responsibilities. Creating a product that could seamlessly adapt to various user roles while maintaining a cohesive core structure was a significant challenge.
This required a deep understanding of specific use cases and role-based requirements. Fortunately, the Avalanche Studios team was there to support us. Developing in-depth user flows was challenging but crucial for visualizing how the product could be optimized for every role.
