Overview
Joining as the third person at LizardLabs, after the CEO and COO, meant I owned the full design from day one. I defined the core UX/UI from the CEO’s concept and saw the product through from a pitch deck to a live game, covering the in-match mechanics, the user interface, and the moment-to-moment feel of a D1SK-opening duel.
The game has three modes players care about: winner-takes-all wagers, a free-to-play option, and an upcoming tournament mode. Around those I designed LizPass, a premium battle-pass offering that needed its own purchase flow and marketing surface. A big part of the work was cross-product integration with Illuvium: Beyond so player D1SK contents carried across both games without friction — a technical and UX puzzle that expanded the value of being in the Illuvium ecosystem at all. End-to-end, I led research, prototyping, user testing, and final implementation, iterating on stakeholder and early-player feedback throughout.
Outcome
BITB launched with cross-game asset integration that the community hadn’t seen before, and the reception was strong enough that the designs became part of LizardLabs’ seed pitch — helping secure funding and expand the team. LizPass became a core offering, adding a revenue stream and giving engaged players a reason to come back.
What I learned
Designing as the first designer at a three-person studio is a different discipline: there’s no specialist to hand the brand over to, no PM to write the tickets, no researcher to run the sessions. You own all of it, and the design work is only honest when you’ve done all of it. That changed how I scope 0→1 work now — the blocker is rarely the Figma, it’s whether the surrounding system (purchase flow, integration, marketing) has been designed with the same care as the core loop.