Deep Dive into Design: How UX is Fine Collaborates on UI/UX
At UX is Fine, we believe the best design emerges from deep, embedded collaboration — where project files might get a little messy because everyone’s hands are in the work. That “mess” is proof of real partnership — not a handoff culture, but a shared creative process.
In this post, I’ll walk you through how we collaborate on UI/UX design using our Starship Troopers project as a case study. From mood boards to implementation, this is what it’s like to work side-by-side with our team.
Phase 0: Research & Discovery
UX and UI are distinct — but inseparable. At UX is Fine, we live in the overlap between how things work and how they feel. Our job is to navigate that middle ground, translating insight into experiences that are intuitive and immersive.
We design as one team — UX, visual design, and implementation working in sync. Every stage, from early research to final in-game polish, stays connected through shared context and constant iteration. That’s where real collaboration happens.
Before any wireframes or mood boards, we start every engagement by grounding ourselves in research, alignment, and real-world context. This phase sets the strategic foundation for everything that follows.
Our team dives deep into several key areas:
Stakeholder Meetings & Alignment
We hold structured sessions with key client stakeholders — creative directors, producers, engineers, and designers — to establish goals, constraints, and priorities. This ensures we’re aligned on both business outcomes and player experience from day one.
Extensive Competitor Research
We benchmark the landscape — studying direct competitors, adjacent products, and relevant genres. For a project like Starship Troopers, this meant looking at other large-scale FPS, tactical and strategy games to understand how they structure complexity, convey information, and balance usability with immersion.
IP Research & Community Sentiment
Because Starship Troopers is a beloved IP, we immerse ourselves in its fictional universe and player community. We study how fans talk about the game, what features they celebrate, and what “quality of life” improvements they crave. These insights help us design interfaces that respect the lore and respond to real player needs.
Early Prototyping
We begin sketching and gray-box prototyping even during this early phase — translating research insights into lightweight interaction concepts. This helps us validate ideas quickly, visualize potential UX flows, and uncover opportunities before we invest heavily in visuals.
By the end of the Discovery phase, we’ve defined a shared understanding of what success looks like — both creatively and strategically.
Phase 1: Setting the Visual Foundation
The Mood Board
Every project begins with defining a visual language — and that starts with the Mood Board. This isn’t just a collection of inspiring images; it’s a strategic document that guides the visual direction. It clarifies three critical points:
What the UI should embrace
What the UI should avoid
What existing visual language or brand assets we can build from
For the Starship Troopers project, our research was extensive. We explored the current game’s visuals, the broader IP, and comparable modern games.
The outcome: we defined a visual direction that embraced brutalist and monochromatic art, drawing inspiration from vintage propaganda posters to give the interface a unique, militaristic edge. Once the team reached consensus on these pillars, we had our north star for all visual decisions moving forward.
Phase 2: The Collaborative Cadence
Collaboration thrives on rhythm. We maintain a clear, predictable weekly cadence to keep momentum and transparency.
How We Work Together
Meeting Structure: Two video calls per week — typically Mondays for kickoff, Thursdays for review (but flexible to your schedule).
Workflow Integration: We embed directly into your sprints and task management tools — working as an extension of your team.
Goal Setting & Review: We define weekly targets on Monday and review progress Thursday — whether that’s an entire feature or a series of smaller deliverables.
Asynchronous Collaboration: Most day-to-day coordination happens via Slack, comments in Figma, or your preferred platform for quick async feedback.
During this stage, our UX designers prototype and iterate rapidly, blocking in rough styles and layers. This “gray-box” approach lets us explore variations of placement, hierarchy, and interaction quickly before refining visuals.
Phase 3: The UX-to-ui-to-Implementation Pipeline
Our workflow flows naturally from UX → UI → Implementation, with constant alignment between design and engineering.
Engineering Check-ins
We maintain active communication with your development team ( and we do implementation at UX is Fine too! ) to ensure designs are technically feasible, performant, and optimized for your current pipeline.
If you’re using a custom engine, our engineering director joins those sessions directly to validate feasibility and discuss best implementation practices.
Specialized UI Design
Once UX foundations are approved, our UI design team — a blend of illustrators and graphic designers — takes over.
This unique skill mix lets us produce everything from iconography and badges to key art illustrations, character design and in-world emblems, enriching the game’s narrative and visual depth.
Phase 4: Documentation & Deliverables
We treat documentation as part of the design process — not an afterthought.
In-Figma Documentation
All files are meticulously organized within Figma, providing an index of all screens and components. For each feature (like the Mission Selector or Galactic War Timeline), we document across three parallel “lanes”:
UX Version: Notes and structural foundation.
UI Skin: The final visual treatment.
Implementation Flags: Screenshots and notes tracking build status and completion.
This structure ensures anyone — from producers to engineers — can navigate the project with clarity.
Asset Delivery
We deliver all necessary assets in the format that best fits your pipeline — whether that’s individual elements or atlas sheets. Everything is versioned, named, and export-ready to streamline integration.
Our Collaboration Ethos
At UX is Fine, we pride ourselves on being collaborative, transparent, and adaptive.
Every week, we review, refine, and iterate alongside your team — ensuring that design evolves naturally with development and production.
We don’t just deliver files.
We embed ourselves in your creative process, helping shape the experience every step of the way.
Design isn’t a handoff — it’s a living collaboration.
If you’d like to discuss how we approach embedded UI/UX partnerships or want to see our process in action, we’d love to connect.
Cheers,
Ryan Wolper
Creative Director, UX is Fine
