Destiny 2
Senior UI Technical Designer, 2016–2019
I joined Marathon during its earliest incubation phase and spent my first two years working on the Marathon's core UX during incubation and pre-production: building early wireframes, Figma prototypes, and video animatics to pitch interaction concepts for inventory management, in-game interaction design, and incoming/outgoing damage feedback.
In 2022, I transitioned into Combat Design, became feature owner for Equipment and Consumables on the Weapons and Equipment team, and developed the foundational design for their archetypes and functionality. In addition to owning balance and tuning for several shipped weapons, I held full ownership from initial pitch specs through prototype, iteration, and polish for 34+ shipped items including grenades, mines, shields, sensors, and healing/buff consumables.
Below are some of my favorites:
Chem Grenade
Inspired by an infamous video of an exploding, microwaved glow stick. When this grenade hits the ground, it bursts into a pool of bright, glowing toxin that poisons enemies and splashes the glowing liquid onto their feet, so they briefly leave glowing footprints.
Frag Grenade
The Frag Grenade is the oldest equipment item in the Marathon sandbox, and has possibly certainly gone through the most testing and iterations of any item. The Frag Grenade was our gold standard; it needed to be effective (and worth the backpack space) but not oppressive. It was also the testbed for all future grenades as we refined the base attributes and determined what was a shared constant and what set each grenade apart For example, nearly all the grenades in Marathon share the same ready animation timing, base projectile speed, and aim vector modifier. Most have similar friction and bounce physics. But while some detonate on impact or stick to surfaces, the Frag Grenade arms on its' first bounce.
Signal Jammer
This is a consumable that disrupts others' ability to perceive you. It's not invisibility; it operates more like a DDoS attack on nearby sensor hardware, so you appear blurred/censored when enemies look at you.
Players with this consumable active can't be marked or highlighted, and appear like generic AI pings to Runner detection abilities. AI have a harder time hitting the blurred target. It also prevented you from setting off proximity traps like Claymore Mines and UESC Scan Drones, or being highlighted by thermal optics.
Trap Pack
When enemy players are killed in Marathon, their loot drops as an interactable duffel bag on the ground near their body. This equipment item is a decoy bag that detonates when interacted with. It is visually identical to a real bag but has a few subtle tells, IF the looting player is paying attention.
