Design x Patrick Khachi
Artist, Designer, & Storyteller
Illustration by Bonnie Kate Wolf
Interview conducted by Z. Fleischer on August 28, 2020
What has been the most meaningful experience for you in your journey to becoming a designer?
I went to school for art and illustration, and I was part of a game development club in college. That club exposed me to a lot of design outside of art. I really enjoyed learning about game design and the mixed media world, where all of the art, programming, and music come together to tell a story. Building an interactive experience creates this connection with users because they’re actively playing a role in it. I started learning a lot about how games can affect people and how they can use interactive media to learn, grow, and transfer ideas.
In that club, people of mixed disciplines came together to make little projects and games, so it was a very good space for understanding how different people approach creating stuff. It was a nice community of helpful people who bounced ideas off of each other, so it was just fun to be there. In the past, I’d mainly been tailoring myself to create art for television, film, and games, and build worlds for concept art or illustration. As I moved forward, this club opened a lot of doors for me. It showed me what I could be doing with design and how all of these disciplines fit together.
“Building an interactive experience creates this connection with users because they’re actively playing a role in it.”
It seems you enjoy the community that comes with designing games, as well as the combination of all of these disciplines.
Yeah, at work I’ll often go to someone who’s in a completely different department to get their opinion. How a designer thinks about something is different from how a marketing person thinks about something. When all of these visions come together, something great comes out of it. That sense of community that I learned in that club—understanding where other people are coming from and learning from them—really helped shape me to be open with working with people of different visions.
Where does power lie within narrative storytelling?
I believe storytelling enables users to easily connect with whatever you’re building. One example that I really love going back to is a game called Night in the Woods. It’s a game set in this Rust Belt town in the US, and it follows this girl who drops out of college and moves home to hang out with her high school friends. The game is really about what it means to be in this transitional moment where you’re dealing with these emotional issues and how it feels to be an anxiety-crazed 19-year-old. What does that transition into becoming an adult feel like? What does it mean to be a good friend?
A lot of people build games for relatable experiences, to create that connection. Narrative storytelling provides an easy way to engage with your audience and create investment. I’m not from the Rust Belt, but the game really informed me about what it’s like there. Narrative storytelling shows us a broader perspective about what people of different experiences are like.
Emotions are a very strong tool for connecting with people. Keying into a moment in someone’s life can bring back a lot of memories. I’m sure people remember what it was like to be 19 years old—we were all there. There’s that moment where you say, “Ah! I remember that!” There are so many emotions attached to those memories. Emotions and narrative storytelling go hand-in-hand.
How do you facilitate experiences that enable people to create their own memories?
I worked at an education-tech company called Piper, where we built a computer that taught kids how to code. The kids could use real-world hardware to interact with the video game space. One of the things that we took pride in was the creation of spaces where people could create their own fun. Through emergent storytelling, users could go into this perfectly designed step-by-step path, but in the middle they’re open to exploring. They’re open to finding their own way a little bit, looking around, and discovering cool things around the environment. We spent a lot of time trying to find that balance of giving them this step-by-step lesson while also giving them room to enjoy the space. I definitely try to think about that when making my own games. If I make this mechanic, how are they going to play with it, beyond what I expect them to do?
“If I make this mechanic, how are they going to play with it, beyond what I expect them to do?”
How do you think narrative storytelling impacts design?
For quite a few years now, we’ve had storytelling be a centerpoint of design. Products, businesses, brands, and even games in general are these holistic creatures that need to share their stories. I think it's just going to grow from here. When presenting internally at Electronic Arts (EA), I’m usually being questioned about the story I’m telling. How we’re talking about the product is the story, and the story is always at the center of it all.
How do you engage people, especially of non-design backgrounds, and get them passionate about the stories that you’re telling?
I try to think about their lens and their own story. When I’m creating a presentation, I treat it like I’m creating any other design project where I have a persona that I’m presenting to. I ask myself, “What’s their story? Who are they? What perspective are they coming from? What do they like? What do they dislike?” When I know the answers to these questions, I know what’s important to the audience. I then cut out all the things that are not important to them. They don’t need to know user interface specs like the dimensions for this one tile—they just need to know why it exists. How do I translate my design lingo into normal speak?
What drew you to work for EA?
I work in a personalization space, so I don’t work specifically for a game team. I work for the studio itself and provide a service for game teams. It’s a very interesting job because it allows me to learn a lot about game development. I’ll be working with a lot of different games and every single game’s development type is different, from how they think about things to how they build things. Battlefield and Madden face different challenges, and how they convey these solutions to their players are also different. Being immersed in this world—where I have to think about things from a holistic standpoint across EA and also from the perspective of the individual game—is a very interesting challenge. EA is a great company, and there are a lot of very intelligent people that work there. I’ve really enjoyed being in a space where I can be surrounded by these people and learn from them.
What have been your main challenges in design recently, and how have you dealt with them?
Showing the value of UX. It’s always interesting to walk into a space that doesn’t have a lot of UX background, and that happens a lot for me. When I walk into a space like that and show them my process, it can cause a lot of friction because people have their own systems set up. They have their own ideas for how things should go. It’s always an interesting moment when I walk into a room, and they’re like, “Where did you get this data?” Then I’m like, “Here’s this data that says users need this.” And then it makes sense to them.
These people are the owners of their particular part of the product, and they care enough about it to question how I approach and suggest changes to the product. This is when we as UX designers should really advocate for our processes and the people we’re building for.
What would you do when someone in management isn’t likely to change their mind based upon the data?
It’s very hard to approach those situations. There are times when I’ve succeeded in this, and there are times when I’ve failed completely and the product just goes in a different direction. I just need to take solace in the fact that I’ve done my best. At EA, there are around 9,000 people trying to make this product good, and all these people have their own perspectives.
If you can only get one thing 100% perfect on a game, what would it be, and why?
I don’t think I can have one mechanic, feature, or aspect 100% perfect. Every game is different. Every idea is different. Every person you’re building for is different.
“I don’t think I can have one mechanic, feature, or aspect 100% perfect. Every game is different. Every idea is different. Every person you’re building for is different.”
I just attended a talk at this year’s Game Developers Conference that Quantic Foundry did on the different kinds of motivation of audiences that play video games. There are about 19 different segments of motivation, and I can’t build a product for all 19 types of people. If there’s one thing that I can strive for that could be 100% perfect, it would be my process of coming up with an idea and developing that idea into something that’s attentive to user needs, to the story, and to the gameplay, making sure that the fun and just the right amount of friction is there. It’s not just the system to manage the project, but also the creation of the idea, from every stage of understanding who it’s for and why it’s being built to implementation and testing. Having that process all perfect allows you to bend it when you need to.
Rapid Fire Questions
What is your favorite thing to do in your free time?
Play video games probably. I do draw a lot, and I try to make time for it as much as I can. I try to write and build stories for myself so that one day I’m like, “This is the story that I need, in order to build a game.”
What is your favorite book or podcast?
I’m going to go with a podcast, and it’s called The Adventure Zone. It’s three brothers that play Dungeons & Dragons with their dad. It’s really fun to listen to because they have really great chemistry and it’s just good comedy. They started out with Dungeons & Dragons, but now it also involves more tabletop storytelling games.
(Board games are perfect for emergent storytelling.)
Yeah, especially things like Dungeons & Dragons, where a dungeon master has this tale concocted, where the group is going into a cave to fight an enemy, but suddenly everything gets thrown out the window. People creating their own fun through being their own characters and engaging with that world opens up an interesting dynamic.
What or who inspires you?
An artist named Nick Carver. When I look at his work, I’m like, “This is probably who I’m going to be in 10 years.” He makes a lot of artwork, he also does a lot of 3D stuff, and he makes game prototypes for himself—he’s creating worlds.
When you’re creating a world, what matters the most?
If I’m designing a room for a character, I ask myself, “Who is this character? Where did he come from? Why is he the way he is? Is he messy? Does he drink soda a lot? Is he in a relationship? Does he live with his parents? Based upon all of these things about him, what does his space look like? How does his lifestyle affect the space that he lives in?”
The idea behind concept art plays a role in my design work too. When I jump into doing a UX project, I think about who the user is and what their needs are. In concept art and UX design, I’m creating this world built for the person who’s playing it, but also for the people in this world.
What’s your favorite video game, and why?
Hyper Light Drifter. It’s very expressive, even though there are no words in it. Every now and then there’s an illustration, but you explore this world and just try to piece it together. You start to see what the main character is going through, what his struggle is like, and the pain that he goes through as he breaks down coughing throughout the entire game.
How would you describe yourself in three words?
I feel like I have such an umbrella of skills, so I’ve debated how to describe myself for years. In three words, non-sequentially: artist, designer, and storyteller. That’s the only way I could feasibly pull it all together.
