Game UX Designer & Researcher · Trauma-Informed & Affective Design
Sana
Afreen
I research how interactive systems can hold people through difficult emotional experience — then build the games that prove it. Narrative and interface design are how I test the research, not separate disciplines.
The Work Beneath the Work
My research lives at the intersection of human-computer interaction, behavioral science, and affective design. I study how interactive systems can hold space for people navigating high-stakes emotional content — not by simplifying the experience, but by building scaffolding that meets users where they actually are.
Affective Design
Designing systems that actively account for emotional state — building feedback loops, pacing, and interaction models around the felt experience of the user, not just their task completion.
Trauma-Informed Mechanics
Translating trauma research into interactive design language — creating systems that support regulation, not overwhelm, for users navigating difficult or high-stakes content.
Behavioral Scaffolding
Applying Self-Determination Theory and cognitive load frameworks to design systems that actively support motivation and reduce friction at the precise moment of action.
Narrative as Intervention
Using interactive narrative architecture to shift attitudes, build empathy, and support emotional reframing in serious game and educational contexts where story structure is the design.
Selected Work
Every project here asks the same question: how do interactive systems change the way people understand difficult experiences?
Stories as Systems
I write literature disguised as game lore. Narrative design, for me, isn't decoration layered over mechanics — it's the structural logic that makes a system emotionally legible to the person inside it.
My narrative work operates at the level of architecture: how does the shape of a story teach a player what kind of world they're in? How does a room's layout communicate psychological state? How does pacing function as emotional scaffolding?
I bring the same rigor to narrative that I bring to UX research — because a story that doesn't land with a user has failed as design, not just as art.
Space Odyssey
Sci-fi worldbuilding and branching narrative for the Chicago Refugee Coalition — mapping forced migration onto an interplanetary narrative to build empathy through player-driven storytelling.
SpellStep
Story-first productivity — transforming tasks into quests with companion-driven narrative arcs, kindness-based motivation, and a world that responds to the player's emotional state.
Another Day
A papercraft narrative translating CPTSD into interactive mechanics — environmental storytelling where the house itself is the story. Case study coming soon.
Who I Am
I'm a Game UX Researcher with an M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction from DePaul University, where my work focused on affective design, trauma-informed mechanics, and behavioral scaffolding in interactive systems.
Narrative design and interface design are how I test that research — I think like a researcher first, then build the story architecture and interaction systems that carry the findings into something a player can actually feel.
I'm drawn to the places where human emotional experience and interactive technology get complicated — high-stakes content, neurodivergent users, trauma histories, displaced populations. The places where getting the design wrong has real consequences.
Education
- M.S. Human-Computer Interaction — DePaul University
- GPA: 3.83 / 4.0
Expertise
- Affective Design & Behavioral Science
- Trauma-Informed UX Research
- Serious Games & Narrative Systems
- Interactive Narrative Architecture
- UX Research & User Testing
Tools
- Figma · Unity · Twine
- HTML / CSS / JavaScript
- Blender · Notion
Let's Work Together
I'm currently open to game UX design roles, research specialist roles, and studio opportunities in game UX and narrative design — particularly with teams working at the intersection of interactive systems and meaningful human experience.
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