Lessons in Prototyping from Game Design
As a User Experience Designer, it’s required that I refer to prototyping and user testing at least 7 times a day. However, when it comes to building prototypes, it’s always a challenge to figure exactly what to prototype. Or even if the prototype will even be an effective proxy for the problem at hand.
Game Designers are among the most talented designers in the world. They need to be able to create an engaging world that their users (gamers) get immersed in, while creating a challenge that is in the perfect place between compelling and overwhelming. It’s not rare to see people spending tens or hundreds of hours on their favorite, well-designed games. Considering the gaming industry is bigger than Hollywood, there’s quite a bit to learn from game designers.
On a recommendation, I’m currently reading the fantastic The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell (@jesseschell). Schell breaks his book into different lenses and I discovered the chapter Lens #14: The Lens of Risk Mitigation (Lessons in Prototyping). While the book is geared towards game design, the principles Mr. Schell espouses are solid and apply to all types of prototypes.
Schell argues that at a certain point in the creative process, you have to stop having blindly positive thoughts and start considering the things that could go horribly wrong with your project. You should ask yourself the following two questions:
1. What could keep this project from being great?
2. How can we stop that from happening?
Enter the prototype.
At this point you need to focus on the problems you would most like to avoid. The problems that you shoved to the back, to consider at a later time. Now is the time to prove your concept and solve those problems. Schell provides eight guidelines to make the prototyping process valuable and effective.
1. Answer a Question
You need to be able to state questions clearly, otherwise your prototype will be a ‘time-wasting boondoggle.’
Resist the urge to overbuild your prototype and focus on making it answer only the key question.
2. Forget Quality
People take a lot of pride in craftsmanship. This needs to be removed. All that matters is that it answers the question
A polished prototype can actually defeat your purpose by hiding real problems, thus lulling you into a sense of security.
3. Don’t Get Attached
“Plan to throw one away. You will anyway.” —Mythical Man Month
You need to approach with the mindset that everything is temporary. The only outcome that matters is answering the question (see Step 1).
You won’t throw out everything. You’ll keep little pieces here and there that you learn really work and you’ll combine them to make something greater.
4. Prioritize Your Prototypes
There often will be several things that can jeopardize the success of your idea. It’s important to prototype the biggest risks first, so can address the hardest issues first.
Also determine if there are any dependencies among your multiple prototypes. If the success of two other features relies on one keystone feature, test the keystone feature first.
5. Parallelize Prototypes Productively
When building complex products and systems, it’s often the case that there are several open questions and risks that need to tested and validated.
If there are no dependencies between your prototypes, then create and test multiple prototypes at once. You can answer multiple questions simultaneously, which makes your process faster.
6. It Doesn’t Have to Be Digital
The key here is, use whatever methods to answer your questions as quickly as possible.
The underlying mechanics will usually be the same whether digital or analog. Every game has rules, interactions and economics that need to be designed outside of code. As do products.
You can create pen and paper prototypes or low-fidelity Invision or Balsamiq flows. As long as you’re getting feedback early and often.
7. Pick a “Fast Loop” Game Engine
This is the equivalent of choosing the right tools. You want to minimize the overhead of getting in and building. Use tools that are meant for this. For example, build your interaction prototypes using Framer.js over creating an entire sandbox environment.
The more loops you get, the more you can test. The more you can test, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better the product gets.
8. Build the Toy First
Toys are fun to play with for their own sake, while Games have defined goals and are a much richer experience in terms of progress and achievement.
Ensure the core functionality of your product (the “toy”) makes sense before creating an entire world and ecosystem around it.
