One moment that relates to my essential question was after I had finished my Game Design Doc and began building my initial prototype. I started by working on some of the cards for my game, which ended up taking me hours. When I was coming up with my idea for the cards, I didn’t give much thought to their development, assuming I could easily print them out, put them in their protective sleeves, and be done with them within an hour. I ended up spending an hour alone just figuring out how to organize and print out the cards. By the end, an idea I spent 15 minutes writing about took me 5 hours to complete, and that was just for the prototype.
I think that this instance relates to my essential question as it starts to answer my essential question. My essential question is: what is the relationship between design and development? This experience helps to answer it by showing how it’s far more complicated than a one-to-one process. It is far easier to create and expand upon an idea than it is to actually create it. Additionally, creating something requires a lot. A lot of things need to be taken into account that isn’t considered when creating a design. For me, a challenge was finding out the right format and settings to print the cards correctly.
Caleb, some interesting observations here. One questions to ponder is how close to a “finished” product is this first prototype? It’s my experience that people often spend way too much time trying to get the first prototype completed because they have an idea in their head about how it needs to be. It can be really helpful to prototype low resolution versions first (in this case maybe pencil and paper as opposed to printed). These kids of quick prototypes can provide valuable insights about how the design is functioning without getting caught up too early in some of the constraints that a higher quality prototype can create. It’s also easier to test these quick initial prototypes to get feedback from users (e.g., does the layout of this card make sense? do you have a clear idea of what it’s asking you to do? etc.). Keep up the good exploring.