Matt Pugmire has been a Principal Industrial Designer at Logitech since 2017 and, in 2024, moved to Design Lead for Logitech G PRO Series. He’s worked closely with all types of users during product development throughout his career and now works closely with athletes designing the next range of PRO Series equipment.
For me the most rewarding part is partly learning how this particular user engages with our brand and our products. I think the design process is a lot about empathizing with people from different backgrounds, different lifestyles, and different needs.
Being in the esports space where the needs are so extreme is just, it's fascinating. I love the process of learning how other people benefit from quality design and how getting things right with a product can catapult them into completely new spaces.
And I think ultimately, just seeing all that hard work to develop a new product, and when you get it right, it takes the trajectory that you hoped for. In our case, it actually becomes something you get to see on some of the world's biggest competitive gaming stages. That's the North Star that we shoot for, and when you get it, it's very exciting.
I think everything is just so much more extreme for esports athletes. There’s a universal process with most products: engage with the user, understand their needs, translate those needs into design solutions, test those solutions, and then ultimately develop the final product. Every stage of that process is so much richer, in my experience, when working with pro players.
Every feature, every design surface of the product, every button click, every minutia – these users are hypersensitive to all of that. So as a designer, it puts you on your best game to deliver. It’s a different element of pressure, a great kind of pressure, around the significance of the products that you're putting into this space. There are careers that rely on a good quality product and your solution delivery.
I love the complete story that PRO Series products are backed by esports athletes who perform at the highest level, but our products can also be yours. It's not exclusive to pros. These aren't one-off ‘Pro model products’ that only the best of the best get. Everybody can be a part of the journey.
The ‘Designed with Pros’ process has been at the heart of the PRO Series product design process since the beginning. Over the years, we've gotten much more deliberate about how we engage esports pros, including them in the entire journey of new product decisions and putting new early-stage prototypes in their hands.
This process is incredibly important because it honestly defines who we are and what we do. We're not claiming anything that we can’t back up by collaborating with pro players. We’re quite literally crafting new ideas and new products hand-in-hand with players. And I think for me it's super important just to have a kind of a reality check on our own assumptions.
Sometimes by working in one industry for years and years and years, you can form some pretty strong personal opinions. I think this process forces us to check our egos and assumptions and truly be guided by what the pro players need and want.
It gives us the authenticity that anything with a PRO Series mark is truly backed up by passports athletes.
The whole process is really special, I think. It's always fascinating to explain to people who don't have a lot of familiarity with the gaming space that esports pros are athletes and that my job is to design products that impact their journey to championship stages.
The ecosystem around the industry and sport is huge, and hearing me try to explain my individual role out loud really makes me appreciate the impact a little bit more. Being involved in steering this at the same time, a very big and very niche ship resonates with me a lot. Contributing to the space and seeing it evolve and grow globally.
Anytime I get to visit parts of the world where esports is more well-known than it might be in the U.S., and just talking to people there, you really get to see kind of the cultural impact of all of this. The widely-recognized pro players and the local favorite titles.
Gaming truly is the culture of a massive number of people. And getting to represent a super powerful brand and line of products in that space, it's amazing to be able to add to the culture.
