LinkedIn / Dec 2023 – Aug 2024
LinkedIn Games
I was brought into LinkedIn's Moonshot org to help design and ship a new games surface that felt playful without feeling out of place on LinkedIn.
Role
Principal Designer · Design Lead
Why it mattered in the deck
In the original interview deck, Games was the clearest proof that I can bridge strategy and craft: invent a new product surface, make it feel native to the platform, and obsess over the micro-interactions that make people come back.
Context
The brief was unusually compressed. By May 1, 2024, LinkedIn needed three games ready to launch, even though the team had no mature design system support and the product still had to answer a strategic question: why should games exist on LinkedIn at all?
Challenge
Build a 0→1 games experience under a hard deadline, define an interaction language from scratch, and make the work feel aligned with LinkedIn's brand and social graph rather than imported from somewhere else.
Role and scope
Design lead and principal designer, solo for most of the project.
Partnered closely with the Moonshot product director and engineering.
Defined the mini design system, motion language, completion states, and tactile interaction patterns.
Supporting materials from the original deck
Mini design system
A compact set of components and state rules created specifically for the games surface.
Micro-interaction demos
Prototype and video studies for Pinpoint clues, Queens cell logic, Crossclimb ladders, and game-completion feedback.
Haptics and sound studies
Detailed explorations of timing, tactility, and celebratory feedback, including comparisons between default and custom animation approaches.
Tango prototype
A fully interactive Figma prototype built from component states so visitors can understand how the puzzle works by playing it.
Process
Frame the strategic fit
Before polishing the games themselves, I anchored the experience around why these games belonged on LinkedIn: lightweight mental exercise, a daily ritual, and a new reason to reconnect through messaging.
Build a mini design system
Because we did not have ready-made support, I built a small system of components, states, spacing, and motion rules that could scale across multiple games under the same deadline.
Design the feel, not just the screens
I prototyped clues, ladders, grid interactions, haptics, and completion animations in detail. The goal was not just clarity, but a specific feeling of momentum and satisfaction.
Use prototyping as proof
Figma became the medium for testing game logic and tactile feedback. That later made Tango playable as a fully interactive prototype, not just a static artifact.
Design Decisions
Design for 'fit but fun'
Every decision was judged against a tension: the games had to feel playful, but still recognizably LinkedIn. Sharing results through messaging and social touchpoints helped the feature feel native rather than bolted on.
System first, polish second
Shipping multiple games on one schedule demanded a reusable interaction grammar. Building a mini design system early kept the team aligned and made later polish much faster.
Prototype micro-interactions directly in Figma
I used component states and prototype logic to test how cells toggled, how buttons responded, and how completion moments landed. That let stakeholders experience feel, not just review screens.
Hack beyond Smart Animate
For completion moments and sound timing, I moved past default motion behaviors to get something more organic and satisfying. The portfolio deck explicitly contrasts the default animation with the custom one because the difference is tangible.
Interactive prototype
Play the Tango prototype
This is the original Figma prototype used to demonstrate Tango's logic, state changes, and interaction rhythm. It is intentionally embedded as a playable artifact rather than reduced to screenshots.
If the embed does not load, the prototype is still password-gated or restricted. A public, embeddable share link is required for visitors to play it inside the site.
Open in FigmaOutcomes
3 games launched
Queens, Crossclimb, and Pinpoint shipped on the May 1, 2024 deadline after a compressed design cycle.
Shared interaction foundation
The mini design system gave the team a reusable baseline for states, motion, and feel across the games surface.
Tango became game four
I returned in August 2024 to design Tango, a new logic game whose Figma prototype is strong enough to let viewers play the core interaction model directly.
In the original portfolio, Games carried the craft half of the story: 0→1 building, micro-interaction quality, and the ability to make something new feel native to LinkedIn.