Playbyte An all-in-one app for making games on your phone

UI/UX Design
User Empathy & Research
Whiteboarding & Prototyping
Flow Mapping

My Work with Playbyte

Playbyte operates in the startup space, and was featured in TechCrunch and referred to as the "TikTok for games". During my time working with the company, the mission was to update their application and help them shift toward a more advanced platform for creating full-fledged games on your phone that was also simple and clear to use.

A 3D render of the Playbyte logo for use in marketing and social feeds.

I spent time diving into visual coding, social features, and conceptualizing an experience that game designers and engineers alike would find both valuable and enjoyable. The sands shifted over time regarding the target demographic, from the general public to more serious current and would-be indie game creators, and this change may be evident throughout some of the following design examples. The following work includes samples from an iterative design process, so you may also notice inconsistencies across features and visuals. The company has since pivoted into a more game-development-focused solution.

The Playbyte App

My task for the Playbyte app was to create a sophisticated visual coding experience that was simple and accessible for beginners, while being robust and powerful enough for veteran game designers and engineers.

Discovering quality solutions to the problem at hand was completed via competitive analysis, research, and multiple iterations.

Reusable assets

Over time and iterations, it became clear that some features were going to be immensely helpful in the creation of games, and would also aid users in social collaboration and the inevitable commercialization of game assets.

We worked to design virtual collections that would help users to re-use both code and game objects created in Playbte via a global palette and component library.

Game management & publishing

At its core, the existing Playbyte app was a social-feed-based application similar to Tiktok with features like commenting, remixing, and rating. We worked to fully redesign the views and interactions around social engagement, game and scene management, and publishing games to the public.

Visual design language

Playbyte was in the early stages of developing a strong visual foundation when I began working with them. Over time, a design language organically began to emerge. As mentioned, the company has since pivoted - however you can observe the early stages of a design system coming to life in my sample image below.