For the PlayStation 5 launch, I led design of a unified, self-service PSN account management tool inside PlayStation Partners — Sony's platform supporting over 300,000 game developers and publishers.
Game teams previously managed hundreds to thousands of test accounts across six disconnected tools, slowing integration, QA, and testing, and pushing teams toward manual workarounds. I led end-to-end design of a new API-driven web tool that centralized account creation, management, and testing in one place — including the ability to manipulate account properties and simulate player scenarios required for PS5 Technical Requirements Checklist (TRC) validation.
Account management for game developers was fragmented across six separate tools, which teams found confusing and hard to navigate. This pushed developers toward workarounds and outside solutions, and pulled PlayStation support teams into account setup that should have been self-service.
This project ran across 16 months and 7 SDK release cycles, with delivery largely driven by what was demanded or agreed to for each milestone rather than by extensive user research — the org didn't invest heavily in testing or interviews on the developer/partner side of the business at the time. The working assumption was that hitting each milestone's agreed scope was sufficient, even when that wasn't always the full picture of what developers actually needed.
Practically, that meant prioritizing getting core account management functionality shipped and reliable in time for PS5 launch over more exploratory work — including deprioritizing an early direction around surfacing richer player data (connection quality, skill level, play style) to help developers build better matchmaking. That thread didn't make it into the shipped tool; the milestone-driven reality of the project meant core CRUD and testing functionality took priority.
Centralized account dashboard — single place to view and manage PSN test accounts, replacing six disconnected tools
Account property editors — let developers override account properties (profile, network conditions, play history) to quickly test and confirm game behavior against PS5 TRC requirements
API-first architecture — built in parallel with backend APIs so the tool could expand to new account types and testing scenarios without redesigning core flows
Replaced six fragmented tools with one centralized, self-service system
Reduced reliance on PlayStation support teams for account setup and changes
Sped up QA and certification cycles by making account setup and property manipulation fast and self-service
Shipped an MVP in November 2020 for PS5 launch, followed by 8 additional features across 3 phases
This was some of the largest-scale platform work in my career — designing for 300,000+ external developers under a hard launch deadline, across an API-first system that had to scale over time. It's also a good example of designing under real-world constraints rather than ideal ones: shipping against committed milestones with limited room for user validation is a common reality in enterprise/platform work, and it shaped what this tool became and what it didn't address. Looking back, the biggest thing I'd do differently is push harder for even lightweight validation with developer partners between milestones, rather than treating agreed scope as a proxy for the right scope.