Problems, Problems
I find myself in a little bit of a bind at the end of week 3.
I am beginning to wonder if this course is actually a good fit for me.
The challenge this week has caused me issues as outlined in another blog entry. It’s not that I don’t understand the subject matter, as I do, very well in some instances. It might be that at 48, and having been out of the games industry completely for the last 12-13 years, I am too long in the tooth and unable, or maybe unwilling, to adapt to how things are being done on the course.
I find myself at odds over a few things, and biting my tongue as there are things I want to say, based on previous experience, that I believe would work better for most people on the course.
The Week In Brief
The main topics of this week, entitled “Rapid Ideation” have been:
- What is Rapid Ideation?
- Approaches To Prototyping
- Tools For Prototyping
What Is Rapid Ideation?
This short video was a brief introduction as to what rapid ideation (RI) was, centred around the idea that it is for creating an artefact, whatever that may be, within known, usually tight, time constraints, focussing primarily on actually producing some form of the artefact rather than just designing. A hands-on approach to product development.
It was stated that RI usually takes place on “low-stake” products, to allow new, untested, techniques to be used. Whilst I agree with this in part, I have found that quite often some high-stake, sticking problems benefit from an RI approach.
What RI forces, as the name suggests, is ideas to be rapidly brought forward and acted on, rather than have anything deliberated over. Often this brings out innovative, off the wall ideas, as nothing should be looked at as being off the table.
One of the key principles of RI is that of prototyping. This is the process of creating a working version of the artefact in question, and can be achieved through numerous different types of prototype. For my domain, software, the prototype would usually be showing a working subset of the full feature list for an application, or a complete level of a game showing all game mechanics.
Some key prototyping methods mentioned were:
- Wireframe
- Paper
- Video
- Vertical slice
Approaches To Prototyping
There was a lot of information contained in this video. Really too much to really cover in a simple blog post.
The key point being made, specifically emphasised, was the need to produce prototypes throughout a product development cycle, which tend to dovetail in with the whole process of iterative development using methodologies like scrum. Again, from personal experience, depending on sprint length, I like to see a new prototype of some feature of the game/application at the end of each sprint, whilst having firmed up the “prototype” features from previous sprints.
Tools For Prototyping
Here we were led through a more comprehensive list of prototyping methods, and introduced to some tools for each method:
- Sketching
- Storyboarding
- Paper Prototyping
- Physical Modelling
- White / Grey Boxing
- Wireframes/Interactive Wireframing
- Game Prototyping
- Narrative Prototyping
- Wireflow
- Body-storming/Role-playing
- Wizard Of Oz Testing
There was a lot of detail here, and a few, such as body-storming, that I had not heard of. Although quite fascinating how some of them work, I fell into concentrating on game prototyping, as that is my strength.
It was interesting to see my chosen tool for 2D prototyping, Games Maker Studio, mentioned, because of it’s strong visual drag and drop interface. I have never used it, as everything I do is custom-coded, but I know it is extremely powerful.