Not your usual fancy buttons, micro interaction and menus prototyping post. There are many out there that show cool ways to mimic UX/UI interactions, transitions, login forms etc, which are great... but this article is about taking it to the next level!
The question I ask is - can we go beyond? Every UX, Game, Product designer aspires enhancing prototypes to map the complete user flows, not just bits and bobs.
This article is divided into Tactical and Strategy layers. I will cover the former first.
As an UX Director, I have to continuously work on both Tactical and Strategy sides of UX with my team and stakeholder groups to enhance the quality, push the limits and strengthen the integrity of our UX pipeline and process.
In my last article Here, I detailed the process and benefits of low to mid fidelity prototypes where we built a device ready interactive version for user testing.
Example below of our low-fi proto. built during the last post.
<iframe title="Test Video" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/fuPTg78sgbo?enablejsapi=1&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamedeveloper.com" height="360px" width="100%" data-testid="iframe" loading="lazy" scrolling="auto" class="optanon-category-C0004 ot-vscat-C0004 " data-gtm-yt-inspected-91172384_163="true" id="273088401" data-gtm-yt-inspected-91172384_165="true" data-gtm-yt-inspected-113="true"></iframe>My last post focused entirely on just prototyping a low-fi stand-alone feature. This time we will build a hi-fi prototype with inter-connected features, hence testing the entire user journey and core game flow.
High Stake Rapid Prototyping with Cross Discipline Teamwork
By high stake, I mean involving your top tier stakeholder group who, makes decisions on developing a product strategy, signs off on feature specs. during pre-production or before development starts. I will dwell more on this later in the article.
Get your key stakeholders and target audience excited from the GO, with cross discipline UX Prototyping! Here is how..
Rapid prototyping a Match 3 Game without writing a single line of code
Today, with some ingenuity and combination of different design disciplines, It is possible to massively push the limits of your prototypes.
Let's see how.
The genre we will be prototyping today is a generic Match 3 game, one of the most popular casual game category. I don't advise getting to this stage without the steps covered in part 1 of this series.
Main flows and heuristics we will attempt to nail down with this prototype are:
Initial loading - Keeping the player informed
On-boarding/tutorial - Teach the player how to use your product
Game map - Show player the path to progression
Level design + Core loop
Booster mechanics : Unlocking a booster
Booster mechanics : Teaching players how to deploy a booster
