Why does digital design matter? (A gamer’s Point of view)
As a gamer, I like things to happen fast and easy. No one wants to have challenges that are boring or useless. As a gamer, I want to feel that my games are smooth; that’s why we crave for the 60 fps (frames per second) or 120 fps all the time. This smoothness is so important that even console game companies run ads on this topic!
“XBOX ONE X, run games in 4K and 60 fps”.
So why did I just say this? The reason is simple. We as human beings love to feel that our tasks get done fast. If something doesn’t happen in a desirable way, we usually get bored, or may even hate that game or app or product.
This is where design comes in. Designers try to guess what you may want the most out of an experience. In game design, they say something like“Do gamers care about the game mechanics and the game tactics, or visuals and details?”
Also as gamers we want the game to be fun. We want it to have a good story, cool side quests, and we want our main character to be cool, right?
And here comes up questions like:
“What kind of cool side quest? Is it challenging or fun? Or both?”
“Who’s the main character? A knight with a heavy armor and a great-sword, or a princess who like dancing and singing?”
“What do we mean by a good story? Is it long and detailed? Does it have so many emotional scenes? Is it full of action or love?”
See? These are just basic questions everybody asks themselves when they hear these kind of sentences.
So, designers try to understand what our needs can be and what do we really mean by the things we say or do. They take notes and then try to create an experience that we most likely might expect. Like do you remember Call of duty: Modern Warfare 2? It definitely was an awesome game to many many people, why? Because, the game company did the design part right. The gamers loved the story and the game-play mechanics and the overall theme. Design, alongside amazing development, created an experience that is still loved by many many people (Yeah, I know there are more parts involved in game creation and I thank them all but we’re here to read about design right? 😂 ).
Design Thinking, a good way to design amazing experiences
So, whats design thinking? It’s a method that designers use to create a good experience for others.
It has five steps: Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
These steps happen like a cycle, designers jump back and forth in these steps to find the right answer.
Why does design thinking matter in games?
Let’s think of the game industry, again. Shall we?

Empathy
Do you remember the time when battlefield 1 came out? Why was it a huge success?
Reason: The company put itself in the gamer’s shoes and looked at the game as we do. They saw in Reddit and other gaming communities and by research that plenty of users wanted a battlefield set in the past, probably world war 2 or World War 1(Empathy). So, they created the Battlefield 1, set in world war 1.
Define
When EA found out that gamers wanted a world war 1 game, they started to think what exactly gamers meant by that.
Did this mean that they wanted vehicles that are slow? Did they want to see a real world war 1 battle strategy experience? Or something else?
They found out the gamers wanted a game that is based in world war 1 locations. The wanted the world war 1 look but not the feel. They didn’t want the cars and vehicles to be slow.

Ideate
After defining the goals and problems and getting more details, designers and developers start to build the early version of the games call the alpha and beta versions.
They try to guess, by research, what the users needs may be. They try to find creative solutions for the problems and goals they want to achieve.
In this step, there is a rule called “no judgement” rule. We don’t judge ideas at all. Cause if we do, we just slow down the game design and development process.
Prototype
When the ideas are there, the designers find the best answers to these problems and goals and then start building the game.
When the game is somehow done, somewhere in the development process the game gets tested in the studio; to find the basic bugs and problems with the overall game. After a time period, it will be too hard to find problems and bugs in the game, then the big test begins.

Test
The game is somehow ready, like 70% ready. So, the game company releases a beta version. Because of this, they can get enough feedback to finish developing the game in an appropriate way. After getting feedback and the game development done, it’s time to release the game to world.

Note
Design thinking is so much deeper than what I just wrote here, in order to learn more about design thinking, you can search the internet for more content and it will help you understand it in a better way.
So what game stories do you think you can fit in design thinking steps?
