Transforming complexity into clarity, and inefficiency into impact.

Note: This case study is adapted from a talk presented at the Game UX Summit 2025 in Antwerp, Belgium, co-delivered with my fellow designer, Mihyun Ko.

Role
Senior Product Designer

Team 
Product Owner - Pierre-Adrien Delisle
Developer - Quentin Bellus, Marc Dubois
Quality Assurance - Game Streaming Team in Ubisoft Bordeaux

Timeline
2024 - 2025

Platform
Web

In 2023, the gaming landscape shifted as Ubisoft acquired the cloud-streaming rights for Activision Blizzard's catalog. This strategic move didn't just expand our library; it fundamentally transformed Ubisoft into a central hub for cloud gaming.

(Game Build) PC Partner Propagation tool is about how we notify our streaming partners, such as Amazon Luna, GeForce NOW, and Blacknut, that our new game build is ready for them.

The Challenge: Beyond Manual Delivery

Before we had a tooling solution, our existing communication process was done through email:

As you can see above, it relied heavily on lots of back-and-forth messages for basic information and confirmations.

This example was just for a few early steps with ONE streaming partner before the actual propagation step.

Also, considering games require frequent updates, e.g., games offering live service – like every few weeks – that means this chain repeats for every new game build and every streaming partner. ​

This email-heavy process had several issues:

• Too much manual communication via email, which meant our users were spending valuable time on redundant back-and-forth.
  
  
• As long as information is manually typed and verified across emails, mistakes are inevitable.​
  
  
• This process had to be reproduced for each streaming partner and for every new game build update, leading to constant, inefficient repetition.

That's how the Game Streaming team in Ubisoft Connect ended up working on the mission to define Game Build Propagation.

Moving from "Inbox Chaos" to a Centralized Tool

The idea to stop the endless email threads was to build a new service and a dedicated tool within our internal Online Services Console. The goal was simple: create a clear, digital bridge between us (Ubisoft) and our streaming partners so that everyone—from our Release Managers to the teams at Amazon Luna, GeForce NOW, Blacknut, and Activision Blizzard—could streamline the sharing of game build information.

Translating "Dev-Speak" into a User Interface

The engineering team had already started with the backend, set up a solid database schema, and drawn a rough UI sketch. However, the first drafts of the tool were essentially almost a direct mirror of the code.

That was the moment when I joined the project — My job was to look at three key complex data entities and figure out how to present them in a way that felt intuitive:

• (Streaming) Partners — who we’re working with​
  
  
• Game Build Configs  — what game build settings they(streaming partners) need
  
  
• Propagations — How a game build is distributed
  

These became the building blocks of the tool's interface.

The new interface empowers our users to manage game build configurations and partner communications with clarity and efficiency—directly building on the three core entities.​

In this new flow, the system handles the tedious parts: it detects when a new game build is ready, notifies the partner instantly, and tracks their progress as they download and test the build. The tool provides real-time visibility at every step — from "Pending" to "Live."

A clear legend for propagation status also helps everyone — regardless of technical expertise — understand what’s happening at a glance.​

From Complexity To Efficiency

We went from a manual, fragmented, error-prone communication process via scattered emails to a centralized, visualized, automated management system:

• All streaming partners' information, including partners for internal test purposes
  
  
• Game build configuration mapping technical details of game products and their branches
  
  
• Propagation tracking that provides a clear overview of propagation status and gives real-time feedback

Although some steps in the MVP release are still manual due to several dependencies, our long-term goal is to provide a seamless & end-to-end workflow and a scalable tool for whatever comes next in our partnership with streaming platforms and beyond. 

As a result, manual effort is down, and accuracy is up. Our pipeline is now more streamlined. We transformed complexity into clarity, and inefficiency into impact—powering the initiative that allows players to enjoy Activision Blizzard games on Ubisoft+ Premium today.

© Daekeon Kim 2026