United States

UX Design

Game Design

Heather Arbiter

Head of Product

Public Speaking

Collaboration

Problem-solving

Stakeholder management

Adobe Creative Suite

Figma

Jira

Miro

Unity

ChatGPT

Communication

Organisation skills

Understanding factors that lead to a motivated team - recognition, communication and more.

Keeping team members motivated

How to create a positive workplace culture that drives collaboration and productivity?

Fostering a good team culture

Making remote and globally distributed teams work for you and your needs.

Working remotely

Navigating micro-aggression, getting paid what you are worth and finding a community.

Being a woman in tech

Get actionable feedback on your resume or portfolio.

Resume and portfolio review

Best practices for running productive design critiques.

Running effective design critiques

Manage team expectations and get the most out of your meetings.

Running effective meetings

Tips on how to work and collaborate with designers.

Working with designers

How to work with team members with different skill sets but towards a common goal?

Working cross-functionally

Ways to provide constructive feedback to team members.

Giving effective feedback

Best practices for documenting projects, epics, and stories

Writing product requirement documents

Staff CAs manage and support the other CAs with in-depth knowledge of event operations, mentorship, decision making, the games industry, and customer service. We are sometimes seen at GDC in polo shirts that match the other CAs in color roaming the halls ready to step in and help. Or we are invisible serving as "guy in the chair" on the end of slack/radio conversations that CAs have to help attendees and make sure the conference runs as smoothly as possible. 

In this role, I also designed and built (coded HTML/CSS + JavaScript) a browser-based training game using spaced repetition and dynamic difficulty adjustments to help train the CAs to learn the names of the 450 other CAs they’ll be serving with at the next event.

Product and gamification services for a short-term project for a large healthcare company to increase retention in a digital product. Responsible for requirements gathering, product documentation, data collection strategy that preserves patient privacy, execution and delivery with external dev team, art direction, scoping, user research, and client relations.

Daylight was an early stage fintech startup with a goal of closing the LGBT+ wealth gap by providing neobanking services aimed at the LGBT community. In late 2022, we attempted to pivot creating a new planning and support service (Daylight Grow) to help LGBT families finance and navigate adoption/conception of children. 

As leader of the Engagement Pod, my role was to support community, gamification, notifications, and related features to drive transactions and engagement. I'm proud of leading the company in adoption of Amplitude for data analysis and pushing for the first improvements to onboarding based on funnel analysis.  

For Daylight Grow, I used my systems game design experience to create a system that would give the correct guidance, feedback, and costs for over 100 family planning scenarios.

Learnings include product-market-fit, 0 to1 product development, developing culture at a new company, and #startupLife scrappiness.

Jump Ramp existed at the intersection of gaming, adtech, rewards, and lotto/sweepstakes. With our own first-party ad platform, we would surface ads and opportunities to earn rewards (to be redeemed for giftcards) by installing and engaging with partner apps in a model sometimes called "play to earn."

During my time there I worked on all areas of product including 2 apps being developed for iOS and Android as well as backend functionality and the internal CMS we used for everything from managing sweepstakes to ad placements to user profiles to live content distribution. I also worked on messaging and A/B testing integrations with the martech platform Leanplum and our analytics functionality in Amplitude. I was proudly the top Amplitude user at Jump Ramp.

I worked on a variety of features including revitalizing JRG's VIP loyalty program which rewards players for regularly installing partner apps. We boosted monetization by adding an expiration of the rewards access and complemented it with increases in the overall rewards available increasing D30+ retention by 8%. All without negatively impacting player satisfaction. 

The prize wheel I designed and released awarded real money hard currency (small amounts right to a user's wallet), our softer currency which is earned and exchanged for gift cards, and sweepstakes entries. The economy had to be balanced against the real cash budgets and value/availability of the incentivized ad placements that would award users extra spins. 

Practiced: adtech, martech, lotto and sweepstakes regulations, managing real money and giftcard related economies, attribution, CMS and internal tools, agile project management, A/B testing, et al.

Consulting and design projects for companies such as Marriott, Keurig, Twitch, Verizon, and Volkswagen ("Rule the Road" - Won 2018 Webby for best in Game or Application). Work includes research and analysis, designing systems and features, writing specifications, generating content for gamified features, and advising clients on techniques to improve user engagement, loyalty, and retention at all phases of product development from conception to post-launch. 

Designed Dopamine’s achievements framework; researched and wrote specs for understanding leaderboards, badges, and user motivations. Extensive research and explorations into user engagement, loyalty, and retention techniques. Radically updated and revised Dopamine's SAPS rewards framework.

Lead designer and product manager on a Unity mobile game for international client. Responsible for complete game design and balance of full game and mini games. Coordinate and communicated with client to make sure design met their needs. Ensure design deliverables are met and approved. Collaborate with visual and UX designers on wireframes and mockups. Manage development with remote artists and developers leading standups and planning sprints on Jira.

Currently, I have availability for 1-2 more projects. If you're interested in working together, shoot me a message! I always have room for paid consulting calls to advise on gamification/game initiatives.

Consultant/freelancer for product management, game design, gamification, documentation, idea solidification, long-term engagement, usability design, loyalty, rewards, incentives, community management, user testing, fan engagement, monetization, mobile development, innovation, game scoping, distribution of games and digital products.

I work with companies and individuals of all sizes from indie game devs to startups to global corporations.

Added new responsibilities as roaming support for the CAs at GDC. When a CA encounters something they can't handle, they will escalate to a floater to take on. In this capacity, I also continued to favor the info booth taking on tough questions and communicating via radio to the CA staff.

Conference Associates are an award-winning service organization that help the world's largest event for game developers, GDC, run smoothly. CAs are students, professionals, educators, and games enthusiasts that don neon shirts for the event and can be seen greeting and directing attendees, providing access management to sessions, behind the info counters, and more.

2009, 2010, 2013, and 2014 I served as a CA in a volunteer capacity. (In 2015, the volunteers were converted to seasonal employees at the conference.) I began as a graduate student scanning badges and developed a fondness for answering tougher questions at the info counter, helping make sure that attendees at the event had the best experience of their lives. 

The CAs also function as a massive networking organization of game development professionals that are the best-of-the-best to work with in games

Designed core functionality, interfaces, onboarding, achievements, monetization, story, social features.  Made use of user testing and analytics data to inform design. Hired and managed interns. Designed and built process for game idea submission via SharePoint. Spearheaded documentation standards, influenced business decisions on product and cross-platform development, improved content creation pipelines. Collaborated across teams in an Agile environment. Multiple mobile apps featured by Apple and Google on launch. 

Projects including Microsoft titles, (Microsoft Solitaire, Minesweeper, Mahjong and Taptiles, Jigsaw) on Windows 8, Windows 10. Designer on Twisty Hollow (iOS, Android),  Match and Merge, Imago. Game/UX design for The Daily Crossword (LA Times, Independent, Chicago Tribune), Sudoku, Jigsaw, Wander Words, True? all on the web.

Continued to function as the company's chief game designer, I also undertook the title of Site Director and responsibilities of a Producer. In this capacity, I managed development of projects both for games and general site. Coordinated with dev team to ensure product was fully planned, developed, and released on schedule. Collaborated with business team to ensure their goals were met. Handled scheduling and resource allocation for development team. Managed on-site promotions and game catalog including integration of platform games.

Lead Game Designer on Pocket Beanie Babies, Pumpkin Chuckin', Elf Chucking, Courtly Love: Dungeons & Dating, and Cubugs. Participating designer camPAIN 2012, Mash of the Monsters. Designed interface upgrades and mini games in several holiday event games including Merry Mobile and Hallofun. Instrumental in systems, balance, achievements and progression design. Wrote and maintained documentation, interface designs and wireframes.  Liaised with player community on chat, forums, social media.

Worked on upcoming RPG title in Torque. Scripted elements of system to do vast visual changes in world without reloading levels. Worked with designers, programmers, and artists.  Managed studio wikis.

GA on the Preserving Virtual Worlds project. The Preserving Virtual Worlds project explores methods for preserving digital games and  interactive fiction. Worked with emulators and examined old platforms. Defined testing parameters for data to gather on emulators.  Collected, organized, and documented results.

Worked in a corporate IT environment. Diagrammed stages of development for new automated report generation process. Learned about principles of municipal bonds and software development in the financial industry.

CIC is a marketing company specializing in visual marketing to diverse groups. Created system for media archiving and filing. Trained others in organizational efficiency. Learned principles of marketing and advertising.

In the summers of my youth, when I wasn't otherwise employed, I worked as an office assistant and reception in my grandfather's business. He owned a commercial plumbing company that operated on Long Island and in NYC. There, I answered phones, typed many proposals, redesigned the letterhead, organized files, watered a LOT of plants, sent faxes, and was all around helpful.

Heather Arbiter🇺🇸

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