Unfortunately, due to privacy reasons, I can’t show the bulk of the work that I did at Immersive Labs, so for now, you’ll just have to trust that I actually did quite a lot during my 4 years of employment at the company. As Crisis Simulation Team Lead, I owned the design of multiple internal products, primarily focusing on the narrative design and core development of dynamic “choose your own adventure” crisis scenarios. My cross-disciplinary role required me to aid in early UIX elements, primarily wireframing and interaction/visual design, technical narrative writing responsibilities (up to 20,000 words per scenario), and mapping complex decision trees to enable dynamic and responsive gameplay. Here are some brief notes about the work I did during this time, including sanitised content I can share:
Narrative Design
- Successfully published over 40 crisis scenarios that tested customer organisation’s crisis readiness across 5 sectors (Finance, Technology, Energy/Infrastructure, Healthcare, Logistics), and over 20 attack vectors (including ransomware, supply chain compromise, insider threat, terrorist attack, zero-day exploit, and fire/explosion).
- Supported customers through our professional service team to develop customised crisis scenarios in line with real company infrastructure, org charts, risks and redundancies, and available response plans – ensuring the narrative compatibility aligns with customers.
- Introduced and designed content workflow structures to support the increased complexity of work, including new proofing document structures, workflow best practices from concept to delivery, and QA processes.
- Researched and developed 13 fictional companies across multiple sectors to be featured in scenarios. This work included profiles for employees, branding, RACI charts, Org charts, response plans, and products.
UIX (Interaction, Visual, Research)
- Implemented a structured approach to designing scenarios, involving mapping our scenario node topography, creating detailed wireframe blueprints before committing to live build, collaborating with the product team to develop custom scripts to ingest complex scenarios, and ensuring proofing document compatibility with internal systems.
- Introduced guidance and educational tools and content throughout the product and internal systems to promote and encourage effective internal use of our tools, bridging accessibility gaps for customers to create their own scenarios, and supporting onboarding of junior team members.
- Produced content style guides and templates as part of a wider content asset library to ensure quality and tone remain in line with Immersive Labs brand guidelines.
- Supported iterative testing improvements in both staging and live environments, and collated test data to inform content creation and product development.
- Successfully wireframed and built a custom scenario “Smart Builder” prototype using Figma and Google Sheets in 10% time, aimed at improving scenario publication rate and lead time to respond to real-world events (publishing content quickly following a real-world incident). Collaborated with the sales team to test the proof of concept design to develop a crisis scenario on live customer demos to demonstrate the ease of using our internal content builder.
- Designed interaction flows and visual mock-ups for new product features aimed at improving the engagement and usability of our scenario companion app.
- Supported feature success measurements through data insights and user research.
- Resolved content pipeline blockage by assuming responsibility for content visual design, creating 400+ unique rich media assets (graphics, videos, SFX, music, voice acting, branding, presentations) and templates to support team in creating their own visuals.
Project Management
- Led distributed remote content team to develop internal and customer-facing simulation product catalogue.
- Directed product and content roadmaps and AGILE sprints for internal and client-facing project portfolio (20+ clients across 5 sectors). Clients included Federal Reserve Bank, Bank of England, NHS, GCHQ, Neptune Energy, Mercedes, IQUVIA, Vattenfall, Goldman Sachs, McLaren, Vodafone, JPMC, and PepsiCo.
- Coordinated with Senior Directors as project lead to develop and deliver pilot Professional Services contract ($340K ARR). Subsequently managed crisis scenario projects from proposal to delivery for 14 Fortune 500 companies (£1.43M+ revenue).
The impact of my work at Immersive Labs was significant to the product and the business. We consistently exceeded quarterly content creation targets since product inception (second hire in the team), driving crisis simulation product line growth by 4000% across 3 years, and leading to a new $10M+ ARR revenue stream. Success was measured in constant innovation, timely content and feature releases, and customer growth, as measured by user data and customer feedback.
Working in depth with a broad range of clients provided our team with incredible insights into product use cases, customer needs, and areas of technical improvement to support them. The projects I led enabled the development and refinement of a sophisticated tool to enhance resilience against cyber threats and enable prestigious and critical organisations to conduct impactful large-scale live exercises.
My experience working at Immersive Labs highlighted the importance of strategic planning, cross-team collaboration, and perseverance in tackling complex design challenges. It also reinforced my ability to deliver high-stakes projects under pressure, a skill that I believe is crucial in the fast-paced world of user experience and interaction design.