Series Overview: UX-First Ideation for Indie Teams
- Brian Andrus
- Sep 11
- 2 min read
Small indie teams often wait until late in development to think about user experience, which leads to confusing mechanics, wasted effort, and frustrated players. Over six concise posts, you’ll learn how to surface player pain points, run focused ideation workshops, and decide exactly when to freeze your core loop so every sprint moves you forward with confidence.
Who this series is for
Newly forming teams laying the groundwork for their first project
Small indie groups juggling multiple hats
Game-jam squads and side-project collaborators
Any team committed to shaping standout player experiences from Day One
Series Roadmap
Part 1: UX ≠ QA - Learn why user-experience design belongs at the whiteboard before bug-finding, so you catch the biggest design risks early.
Part 2: Day-One UX - Align your vision with real player needs before a single line of code is written.
Part 3: Spotting Pain-Points - Practical team strategies, like sketch-based walkthroughs and empathy mapping, to surface your players’ hidden frustrations.
Part 4: Workshop Formats - Run structured ideation sprints using rapid sketching, silent brainstorming, and group voting to drive focused creativity.
Part 5: Team Alignment - Sync individual skill-building goals and project KPIs with shared player-experience objectives.
Part 6: Lock-Point Checklist - Define clear freeze criteria for your core mechanics (and overall scope) so you know precisely when to pivot or press on.
What’s next?
Follow our #game-loop-blog channel in our Discord (we’ll drop the links there).
Join the conversation by adding comments to the post on the website or in Discord.
React with with your favorite emoji in Discord if you’re pumped to start designing with players in mind.
