What Makes a Great Quality Designer
’A key trait is the desire to learn’
“We want to lean into the candidate’s strengths and to discover their desire to learn.”
Ravi Minhas, Director of Product Development for Quality Verification, leads a large team of Quality Designers, Development Directors, and Engineers on the Sports Quality Verification team. He’s been with Electronic Arts (EA) for 19 years and what led to Ravi’s decision to stay with EA was the opportunity to work with amazing people.
“The ever-changing technology and gaming expectations challenges the team with new ways to build and deliver FIFA every year to meet our players’ expectations.”
There are often impressions that people who work at EA must be video gamers but Ravi joined EA due to his love for sports. “I love watching sports, coaching sports, playing sports, so it just became a natural fit for me to work on a Sports product like FIFA.” While there are games and sports enthusiasts at Electronic Arts, there is also a wide range of expertise and passions.
What is Quality Design?
Electronic Arts puts quality as a priority for all of its games. “We’ve seen delays in game launches because we need to hit a certain quality standard before we ship it” and as a Quality Designer, the work they do is critical to the success and quality of games that are being delivered to our players.
“The industry and player expectations gradually evolve each year and internally we face many challenges to deliver a game with the highest quality while pushing the boundaries of technology.”
What is a Quality Designer?
There are several perspectives to being a Quality Designer with multiple streams of focus areas. Quality Designers can lean into technical areas related to software quality, become the subject matter expert for player experience or help create a quality product experience from concept to live and more. The role of a Quality Designer is to ultimately improve and showcase the quality we put into all parts of the business to deliver an exceptional product and experience to players worldwide.
Ravi, what do you look for in a Quality Designer?
“I’m looking for someone who has a strong desire to learn and to grow with us. It is important for external candidates to take time to understand how the team works and learn how a game is built before influencing a change.”
Ravi says, “I’d like to see candidates with a diverse skill set and experience who can integrate their past learnings and analyze the landscape before applying changes to how it should be done.” The second attribute Ravi is looking for is the ability to analyze scenarios supported by data or experience before execution and to ask questions.
Showing the ability to learn and to be inquisitive is most important during an interview
“I want to know if a candidate can articulate how they would solve a problem whether it’s from a past experience or a fictitious scenario. A candidate doesn’t have to fulfill every requirement but rather for the candidate to demonstrate how they would critically think and respond to scenarios.”
Team members are empowered to lean into their strengths
Ravi’s team is all about empowerment, the ability to openly suggest ideas, question norms, challenge processes, and lean into strengths. A problem can be solved in many ways “so let’s empower our employees to solve the problem the best way they know how to and to do so in a creative and autonomous way.”
Explore the many opportunities we have as a Quality Designer and start your career at EA!
