Iteration and Prototyping

Having made the effective communication resource for the Project Top Secret design team, I found a particular flaw. In multimedia, communication isn't just language based. It includes feelings, concepts and experiences. While I may make a post about effective communication as a whole, this time I'm focusing on design a development teams, and the need for iteration and prototyping in team communication, and not just multimedia.

Some Facts:

First, a new idea is like a child, it needs to mature and will go through growing pains.

Second, too much thinking will kill an idea.

Third, no matter how good you think you are, you can't anticipate everything.

So, what that amounts to is that while you should think ahead, you should also be doing something with your idea. Thinkers get stuck in their own version of reality and become out of touch. Doers get things done without looking beyond the moment and hit a lot of dead-ends. That's why most people have some of both behavior sets, and why engineers and designers have such interesting relations.

There's a joke I heard in one of my physics classes that goes like this. "An engineer, physicist and a mathematician are all stuck in a burning building. The engineer wakes up, sees the flames, dumps several buckets of water on the flames till they go out and goes back to sleep satisfied. The physicist wakes up, sees the flames, grabs pad and pencil, scribbles furiously, puts out the flames with a cup of water and goes back to sleep satisfied. The mathematician wakes up, sees the flames, calculates the same answer as the physicist and goes back to sleep satisfied there is an answer." For more click here.

Anyways the joke shows my point, "thinking and doing work best together". So, while I could make a big post about this stuff, I'd rather share some great links I've found.

http://www.graphicdefine.org/issue1/iterativedesign

This is an article about iterative designing; what it is, why it works and how you can implement it. While this isn't the biggest most thorough resource on iterative designing, it gets the point across, with tips, in a short read. So, it's a good starting point.

http://lostgarden.com/2005/08/common-game-prototyping-pitfalls.html

This one is second to reinforce the idea that you just need something substantial to think about when you start. Starting too big can kill the process. Too much change can also kill an iteration. Have a change in mind, do a little work, test it and see what you think. That's the big deal to prototyping and iterative designing.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml

Now this is a great article about a great project. Four grad students, fifty games, one semester; combined makes for an experiment in rapid prototyping that all should learn from. Each game was made in a week. Every time I think about what they did it makes me reconsider my own methods.

http://www.lostgarden.com/evolutionary_game_design.htm

Last, but definitely not least, this article is the finale to my jaunt. Simply put, this is the journey from idea to finish for a game, using iterations and prototypes to test and refine the gameplay. This ties the other lesson together with a full projects fruition.

To me, this is a part of effective communication and the creative process. While the eureka moments may be few and far between, the concept may be all you have, time may be short and the idea may need refinement, iterating with prototypes gives the team experience, understanding and potential inspiration to draw on in creating solutions. Done right this becomes the backbone of the creative process with many ideas being testing and combined, resulting in a better result and less team strife.

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan

Iteration and Prototyping

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