Creative Summit
Panelists
Adam Oliver // Santa Monica Studios
Senior Combat Designer
Adam Oliver is a Sr Combat Designer at Sony's Santa Monica Studio where he's been for nearly 5 years. Adam brings a passion for accessibility and the player experience to all aspects of his work. He does his best to include disabled players even when designing complicated and intense combat. Adam is a GDC and Game Accessibility Conference speaker.
Alex Jeng // PEG
Senior Manager, Design Technology
Alex is an engineering manager focused on building prototypes and internal tools that streamline other people's workflow. In his free time, you'll either find him on a golf course or on a couch trying to keep up with all the latest games.
Andrew Jerome // PEG
Senior UX Designer
Andrew specializes in design systems and loves to grow vegetables in his garden. He has a knack for optimizing production processes and works towards harmony between our design and engineering teams. Most recently, Andrew has been focused on PlayStation’s mobile app, and building LEGOs.
Anne Faraday // San Diego Studios
Senior UX Researcher
Hello, I’m Anne! I’m a senior user researcher with 8+ years of experience leading research efforts for MLB the Show at San Diego Studio. I love being a part of the game development process where I’m able to add value by providing insights that connect the dots between users, design, and the business to enable games to reach their maximum potential. To help evolve MLB the Show over the years, I’ve aided the development of multiple game modes from conception to completion like Stadium Creator, Female Road to the Show, Storylines, and more. I’ve also helped our team iterate and improve upon many existing modes like Diamond Dynasty, Live Content, Road to the Show, and more. I look forward to sharing some tales of our game development efforts with my peers in our talk “Data Informed Feature Iteration Across Multiple Releases”.
Ari Bilow // Bungie
Design Lead: Destiny Social Systems + UX Craft
Ari has been working in games since 2004 and somehow still likes it. During the past two decades he’s shipped epic failures and blockbusters products alike with the likes of Activision, Trion Worlds, 5TH Cell, Wargaming, and Bungie. Ari has been at Bungie since August of 2018, acting as UX Craft Lead since 2022, and recently assumed the role of Social Team Lead on Destiny 2.
Asad Qizilbash // PlayStation Productions
Head of Product
Asad Qizilbash is Head of PlayStation Productions and Head of Product for PlayStation Studios. Playing a key role in the formation of PlayStation Productions in 2018, Asad’s deep knowledge of PlayStation IP and strong relationships with PlayStation Studios’ development teams is pivotal in bringing the PlayStation catalog to film and television in a unique way that resonates with the PlayStation community and beyond.
Ava Liao // PEG
UX Designer
Ava Liao is a UX designer at PlayStation, where she leads design for new accessibility tooling. She’s previously worked on VALORANT at Riot Games, and enjoys participating in game jams with friends in her free time.
Brett Lantz // San Diego Studios
Senior Data Scientist
Brett Lantz is a data scientist at San Diego Studio working on MLB The Show. Brett’s interests reside at the center of the Venn Diagram of baseball, video gaming, and big data, and he strives to live by the rule, “why speculate when you can spelunk?” Brett is enthusiastic about data science education, has written a textbook on Machine Learning with R, and teaches courses on this topic around the world.
Brian Allgeier // Insomniac
Director of UX Research
Brian is the Director of UX Research at Insomniac Games where he oversees the integration of user research, accessibility, and inclusive design into the studio's production process. In a previous life, he was a level designer on Spyro: Year of the Dragon and creative director on a wide range of games, from the light-hearted Ratchet & Clank series to the VR horror adventure, Edge of Nowhere.
Brian Parsons // PEG
Senior UX Designer
Brian leads accessibility for the PlayStation Platform team as a Senior UX Designer. He has been with Sony Interactive since 2018 and is a subject matter expert on accessibility standards and best practices. Brian created the accessibility training course at Sony Group Corporation with his gaming accessibility mentor and colleague, Mark Friend at PlayStation Studios.
Cary Liberman // PEG
Staff UX Designer
Cary is a passionate product designer with over 10 years experience crafting immersive gaming experiences. During her tenure at PlayStation, she has supported a range of projects across platforms and workstreams including player’s gaming life, core system experiences, design systems, and cross game/media spaces. She is a strong advocate for collaboration, mentorship, consensus building, and transparency to nurture and build healthy designs
Charlie Denison // PEG
Principal UX Designer
Charlie collaborates across the design team on gameplay, social and store features. Charlie has been at PlayStation for seven years, and played a key role in the PS5 UX, and currently works with the product management team on exploring and giving focus to the future of our user experience.
Chelsea Windlinger // PS Creative
Director of Brand & Services
Chelsea is the Director of Brand and Services in Creative Services Ideation within Global Marketing. Together with the Ideation team, she works to create a connected visual story for consumers across all products and services within the PlayStation brand. In her 12 years at SIE, she has supported brand and creative launch and lifecycle marketing across network, hardware, and brand. She is a Global Lead for Women@PlayStation, an eNet focused on making SIE the best place in the gaming and entertainment industry for women to thrive. Having worked with SIE for 10 years in LA and San Mateo, she is now located in Austin, Texas, where she spends her days connecting virtually with PlayStation-ers around the world, reconnecting with her native Texan friends and family, and working on her side gig as the personal paparazza to her two dogs.
Cordellia Norcross // San Diego Studios
Managing Producer
Cordelia is a Managing Producer with a strong background in project management and team building. She currently works primarily with the user experience and interface design team for MLB The Show, as well as, with the team who maintains the Studio’s proprietary editor. In her spare time, Cordellia enjoys reading, hiking, and exploring the local food scene.
Daniel Morales // PEG
Staff UX Designer
Daniel is a passionate Creative, Designer and Maker living in San Francisco, with a driven force to inspire and deliver high quality of work that generates excitement and bring new perspectives. He has over two decades of design experience working for top brands, crafting digital products, and interactive experiences, plus 7 years at PlayStation working with muti-disciplinary teams across the organization and inspiring our players globally.
Danielle Corporon // Naughty Dog
Lead UI Designer
Danielle is Lead UI Designer at Naughty Dog. She specializes in balancing creative and pragmatic problem-solving for UI/UX. She's worked on The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, Diablo 4, and Heroes of the Storm.
Daria Lanz // PEG
Senior UX Manager
Daria leads a global team of UX designers responsible for the B2B tools that power how game studios create and publish for PlayStation. Throughout the design process she strives to balance an evidence-based research approach with that of Play Thinking to produce sophisticated and fun solutions to complex product and business challenges, laser-focused on creator's real needs. Outside of work she loves escape rooms and immersive experiences, reading, eating, and dancing.
Iris Malang // PEG
Staff Producer
Iris is a Staff Producer at PlayStation and currently supports the R&D Design team within the Global Design Center with a focus on the exploration of technology and innovation as it relates to Body haptics. Their background is a creative mixture of computer animation, illustration, project/program management, and curiosity to find out what makes things tick. In their spare time Iris enjoys the outdoors, painting, and gaming.
J Dietrich // Naughty Dog
Accessibility QA / Dev Support
J is a half blind, half deaf, fully positive disabled gamer that works at Naughty Dog! They use their life experiences as an Autistic with a neurological disability to spread awareness, for cognitive features especially, to be added as a staple in game design. With only 2 years’ experience working in the field, they’ve been at one of the top studios pushing for accessibility in gaming. In their free time they write YA novels, watch Anime, and enjoy playing Genshin Impact.
Jason Campbell // PEG
Director, UX Design
Jason Campbell is a Director of UX at PlayStation, leading the Player Experience team within the PEG organization. With a background in traditional graphic design, typography, and branding, Jason made the leap to UI/UX design driven by a love for understanding and solving problems for people through digital interactions. An avid gamer since childhood, Jason brings a personal passion for gaming into his work, striving create fun and innovative experiences for all players to better connect them with each other and their favorite games.
Joey Rabbitt // PEG
Staff UX Designer
Joey has been at the forefront of PlayStation’s web, mobile, and handheld experience design since 2012 when he joined the marketing department from our London HQ and became the global lead designer for PlayStation's web experiences. In 2018 he joined the product design team in San Francisco to lead the redesign of PlayStation App and the PlayStation web store for PS5 launch. In 2022 he defined the user experience for PlayStation Portal, PlayStation’s first handheld gaming device in over 10 years.
Joby Hirschfeld // PS Creative
VP, Global Creative
Joby is the Vice President of Global Creative in Marketing, next June will mark his 30th year in supporting the PlayStation brand. Currently he is developing a new organization within SIE, Brand Experience Design with a focus of better programming the visual journey of our brand throughout the various touch points with our gamers within our 3D and 5D worlds. In his spare time, he enjoys spend time with my family, chasing his 5 and 3 year old daughters, while remaining a kid at heart.
Kayla Harris // San Diego Studios
Senior Systems Game Designer
Kayla P. Harris is a Senior Systems Game Designer and the Product Owner for MLB The Show’s Diamond Dynasty mode at PlayStation’s San Diego Studio. She is a member of The Game Awards 2023 Future Class, a former IGDA Scholar, and she holds a master’s degree in game design. Her prior works include EA Sports College Football, Echo VR, DomiNations, and several serious games while working for a federal contractor. She has dedicated time to helping minority students learn to create their own games as well as launch their game industry careers. Kayla hopes that her work to magnify diverse voices in the gaming industry will aid the industry's growth into one where minorities are well represented.”
Kyle Richards // PEG
Senior UX Designer
Kyle is a Senior UX Designer working in the Platform experience group at PlayStation in San Francisco. He specializes in platform UX strategy, interaction design fundamentals, information architecture, and UX design documentation. Outside of work, he’s an enthusiastic hiker, cyclist, photographer, and enjoyer of the Bay Area food scene.
Lauren Maeda // Bungie
UI/UX Lead
Hello! I'm Lauren Maeda, and I'm currently a UIUX Lead at Bungie on an unannounced project and a Staff UX Designer in craft. Before this adventure, I crafted experiences for Destiny 2 and Guild Wars 2 at ArenaNet. Off-duty, you'll catch me knitting, enjoying coffee or tea, or tending to my green companions.
Liz Schmidlin // PS Studios
Lead User Researcher
Liz has been with PlayStation for 10 years leveraging her PhD in Human Factors Engineering to support incredible products and people. She is passionate about research methods, accessibility, and helping teams get to great faster. Her favorite games are shooters and action adventure.
Marc Fortier // PEG
Senior UX Writer
Marc Fortier is a Senior UX Writer in SIE's Content Creation team. Before joining Sony, he worked at Ubisoft as a writer/designer on IPs including Just Dance, Gravity Falls, South Park, and Rocksmith. His areas of interest include accessible design, developer experience (DX), and of course – writing.
Mason Foster // PEG
Senior Director, UX Design
Mason leads the global UX Design organization at PEG. He likes to make things, break rules, and frustrate bureaucrats. He does not like to write bios about himself.
Michelle Zorrilla // Insomniac
Adv. Sr. UX Researcher
Michele Zorrilla leads User Research and Accessibility efforts for Insomniac Games, including the Marvel's Spider-Man franchise and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Over the past four years, she's focused on fostering a culture of inclusion and representation, driving the accessibility of studio titles through inclusive design and dedicated features, working with disabled players and consultants, and knowledge-sharing with other PlayStation Studios. Her advocacy also helped create and fill the first two dedicated accessibility positions at Insomniac to establish accessibility as an inherent part of the studio's development process.
Mik Lisiecki // PEG
R&D Designer
Mik comes from an interaction design background on PlayStation and is currently focused on exploring applications of body haptics throughout the Sony ecosystem, including movies, music, wellness, and gaming. His other focus areas in R&D include AI 3D object generation, new gaming peripheral explorations, and using multi-sensory technology to improve mental health. In his spare time Mik loves to play with open world games and tinker around with audio software and hardware.
Mike Stone // PEG
Staff UX Designer
Mike is a Staff UX Designer with Playstation working on player community dynamics, personalized experiences, and building out high-fidelity prototypes. He really likes playing video games.
Otis McLendon // San Diego Studios
Staff UX Designer
I'm a Senior Staff UX Designer at PlayStation's San Diego Studios where I've been jamming for the past 3 years. Hailing from the great city of New York, my "designer way" is to seek out the fun in everything I create by solving problems with delightful opportunities. I also play A LOT of games - if you see me ask me what I'm playing 🙂.
Ramanath Bhat // PEG
Strategic Business Director
Ramanath comes to us from a 25-year history with the SONY Family and currently acts as the lead for the iProject Team with a focus on technology led innovation. Ram brings decades of global business development experience and various partnerships within Sony. During his spare time Ram enjoys listening to podcasts about technology, business, culture, and watching the amazing world of Bollywood content.
Sam Schaffel // Insomniac
Accessibility Design Researcher
Sam was born with Cerebral Palsy, which affects his left side, from a young age he problem-solved and dreamed of making games more accessible for everyone. Sam started in the games industry in June 2018, working at Naughty Dog helping with QA and Developer Support for accessibility on The Last of Us Part II. In 2020, he worked as an Associate UX Accessibility Designer on God of War: Ragnarök. Sam is currently an Accessibility Design Researcher at Insomniac Games having worked on Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and currently working on Marvel’s Wolverine.
Sarah Donovan // PS Studios
Product Manager
I’m passionate and fascinated by the systems and strategies of 1000-hour-games. I specialize in deconstructing these systems of engagement to extract insights for our own games, as part of the central Product Management/Economy Design group (aka, Behind-The-Systems on Slack). I’m mainly a casual shooter player myself, but I’ll dabble in anything/everything that’s in the zeitgeist.
Steve Dolan // Bungie
Senior Design Lead
Steve joined Microsoft Game Studios in 2002. From Quantum Redshift to Gears of War 2 he traveled the world helping game teams adopt Microsoft technologies into their titles. In 2007, Steve moved to Xbox Live where he led Matchmaking and Social Experiences. He also helped make Win+G a thing on your PC. In 2015, he got back to making games with Bungie. On Destiny he’s led teams that brought you dances, season passes, cross save and play, as well as several other core social and player history experiences. Today he’s the Core Game Area Lead for Features and Events on Destiny 2. He’s the one wearing the baseball cap with a hockey team on it.
Tim Nguyen // PSSV
Senior UI/UX Designer
Tim is a multi-disciplinary UI / UX designer with a passion for design, art and technical art. Tim probably enjoys pixel pushing too much; and has the pleasure on working on titles such as Halo, Total War and Returnal.
When not designing UI, you’ll often spot Tim talking his dog Buddy on walks in the English countryside or attempting to play basketball.
Wyatt Wilkerson // PEG
Senior Manager, UX Research
Wyatt is a UX researcher who specializes in consumer electronics and video games. He has spent the last 7 years at PlayStation striving to understand and communicate player behaviors and needs around gaming. When not working, or spending his own personal time gaming, Wyatt likes to chip away at an endless list of home improvement projects.
Zeresh Aria // PEG
Senior Graphic Designer
I am a Senior Graphic Designer for the Global Design Center team. I have worked at SIE for 5 years now, starting my career on the marketing team before shifting to a more corporate design role. I enjoy illustrating and love to incorporate my illustration into my design work whenever possible. I have always been passionate about art and design my whole life and is an outlet for my creative expression. Aside from drawing and designing, I love fashion, hiking, animals, being by the beach, spending time with my daughter.
