Before becoming a game designer, she did research on health care policy, and her experience with spreadsheets and focus groups helped her design rule sets and incorporate feedback from playtests. Once a publisher licenses a game, the aesthetics get worked out, but the information design often comes earlier:
A lot of card layout — which is so important for the user interface, user experience type stuff — a lot of that in my games has gotten hashed out in the playtesting process. There's a lot of information on a Wingspan card, and the layout of where everything is on the card, and the hierarchy of what's bigger and smaller. I was surprised when I got it back from the graphic designer that it looked so similar to what I had sent them.
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