Overview
At Maxis, I worked on improving the Sims 4 Object Editor Tool to make it easier and more efficient for game designers with different experience levels to create in-game objects. The goal was to help both expert designers with over four years of experience and new hires with less than nine months of experience work faster and more intuitively.
Goals: To improve the user experience of tools for internal creators as it relates to finding affordances their employees and new hires.
Challenges: The Maxis Sims 4 Object Editor was originally designed as a powerful internal game engine tool, but it was difficult to access and even harder to use. Running the tool required a cumbersome Windows PC setup that made it slow and resource-intensive. For many designers, simply opening the tool or understanding its functionality required direct help from an engineer. This created a bottleneck in the creative workflow, limiting accessibility and efficiency across teams.
To better understand these challenges, I spent hours interviewing engineers, game designers, and technical artists to learn how they personally used the Object Editor and why they entered the tool in the first place. My goal was to discover, research, and evaluate how the tool functioned within real production workflows, and to clearly articulate the problem spaces that were slowing down development.
A major focus emerged around improving the list and visualization components of the editor, which were essential for browsing, selecting, and modifying game objects. To move forward, I collected data and validated design choices directly through user conversations, ensuring that each proposed improvement was grounded in actual user needs and supported by firsthand feedback.
Solutions: Designers responded positively to the new affordances outlined in the designs, noting that the interactions felt more intuitive and aligned with their workflow. Through a user-centered design process, I gathered valuable anecdotal data that helped validate the direction of the tool’s evolution. Based on these insights, I produced viable solutions that improved usability within the game engine tool and also delivered design alternatives for future exploration, ensuring flexibility for upcoming development phases.
Outcomes: Designers reacted positively to the finding affordances detailed in the designs. We interviewed a subset of EA employees and identified changes that could result in a 5% improvement in efficiency and time savings. If scaled across the entire organization, this could translate to a total time savings of up to 10,000 hours, equating to approximately $500,000 in salary cost savings.
Goals, Research and Approach
Wireframe Design Improvements
The Prototype
