Plan and scope your prototype

Now that you’ve identified an idea and your target audience, you can start planning your prototype in a lot more detail.

In this tutorial, you’ll:

• Scope your prototype and prioritize its interactions.
• Explore the paper prototyping process.
• Define a look for your prototype.

If you have limited coding experience, the guidance below will help you scope your prototype concept.

Creating any interactive experience in Unity takes some code — but that doesn’t mean this learning experience isn’t for you! You can create a basic walking simulator prototype like our example using a few pre-created resources. This is an ideal sort of project for applying everything that you’ve learned in the Creative Core pathway.

You’ll have access to Unity’s free Starter Assets character controllers, which are used in the example prototype. These handle user (player) movement.

We have also created the following three custom script components, which you can use alongside the character controller to handle different interactions. These will give you some flexibility so you don’t have to choose the exact same interactions that we did.

Review the custom script components as part of scoping your prototype concept.

Now that you have a high level pitch to guide you, let’s take some time to scope the concept a little more.

Part of creating a first prototype is distilling your idea down into its most basic interactions and any dependencies for those interactions — that is, things that you need to include to support the interactions.

This is the case whether you’re creating a basic walking simulator, an architectural visualisation app, or a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

The example walking simulator interactivity

The example that we’ve created for this learning experience is a very basic walking simulator. We decided to frame this experience as a very simple puzzle to escape an enclosed area.

The player needs to be able to:

• Move around a space.
• Interact with a button.
• Trigger an event by interacting with the button or moving to a particular area.

Scoping other experiences

But what about scoping an experience that relies on more code and interactivity?

Consider a game that has the main mechanic of collecting objects to create potions (inspired by Little Alchemy, but with more exploration). That could involve the following critical interactions:

• Random generation of one of a collection of objects when the player is in a certain area
• Picking up an object
• Placing the object in a designated area (the potion maker)
• Detecting collisions between multiple objects in the designated area to work out when a potion has been successfully made

The ideal version of this game might involve an inventory system, characters that you meet whilst collecting plants, and all sorts of fun effects. For the first iteration of your prototype the critical interactions would be enough — and an appropriate scope for this learning experience, if you have the coding skills to implement them.

Scope your own concept

Now think about your own concept. Take some time to note down the interactions that would be needed to create it and identify the ones that would be critical for a basic prototype (just like the example).

One tool that many creators find useful to help stress test the key interactions (or mechanics) in an interactive experience before building anything at all in their engine is a paper prototype. This is just what its name suggests: a prototype of your experience created with paper (or digital note-taking/mind-mapping tools).

The process of creating a paper prototype can help you think about the experience that the interaction is delivering before starting to consider the technical implementation.

Other benefits the process may offer include helping you:

• Clarify your understanding of exactly what you need to include to create a minimum viable version of your idea.
• Create an initial output that you can test with others to get their perspective on your initial design.
• Identify potential usability issues in the core design before you start work in the engine.

Important: This approach to prototyping can be a very useful one to explore, but if you are creating a walking simulator or similar interaction-light experience then it may not be right for you. You might find it helpful to review the next two steps anyway, but you can skip ahead to Define a look for your prototype if you prefer.

To create a paper prototype for your idea:

1. Collect your materials or set up a digital tool to work in. It can be helpful to have the tactile element of moving sticky notes and working on large pieces of paper!

2. Create representations of the key elements of your experience idea. For the previous example of a game where the player collects objects to create potions, this might involve:

• A large sheet of paper/an empty space to represent the play area, with the designated potion-making space and area for gathering ingredients marked out.
• A deck of cards to represent the randomized objects that are generated in the gathering area.
• Sticky notes or counters to represent obstacles or non-player characters (NPCs) in the ingredient collection space.

3. Create guidance to make the prototype work. This is effectively what you will program the game to do in response to user input. In the example, this could include:

• A list of NPC behaviors and possible responses for the player when they are encountered in the collection space.
• Details of the effects that obstacles will have on the player.
• A list of the combinations of objects that result in potions.

4. Gather some collaborators to help you test! You can work through the paper prototype yourself using the guidance that you’ve created, but the best way to test your prototype is to get some other creators or friends to help. Four people, including you, is the ideal number to do a test. Each person will take on a different role:

1. The user: Takes on the role of the player or user of your experience.
2. The facilitator: Introduces the experience and encourages the user to share their thinking out loud without asking leading questions.
3. The experience /computer: Completes the actions and gives outputs that the computer would, showing the outcomes of the player’s input.
4. The observer: Watches and takes notes so that the facilitator can focus.

Note: If you don’t have four people, that’s okay! The facilitator and observer roles can be merged with a little planning, and for a casual walkthrough of a relatively simple experience you could also take on the role of the game/computer.

5. Work through the paper prototype. The observer (or facilitator, if you are merging roles) should pay particular attention to:

• Usability issues that relate to the core mechanics of the game.
• Whether the interactions/mechanics at the heart of the experience are fun and/or engaging.

In the example experience, a user who enjoys exploring gentle experiences for their own sake might find collecting plants to create fun potions a restful experience and be charmed by the outcomes shared by the game/computer. However, there’s no real challenge or drive to the experience, and another user might find the overall experience frustrating or boring, even if they like the idea of the game.

6. Evaluate your feedback. Take some time after the session to read through the notes and consider the user’s experience with your prototype. This can give you valuable information about things to adjust or new areas to explore. You may decide to iterate the paper prototype again, or to move on to work in Unity — either is fine!

In the case of the example, you might decide to do another paper prototype, adding more chance and mystery to the experience. For example, you could split the gameplay area into sections. When the player chooses to enter a section, you could roll a die to determine:

• Whether they find anything at all.
• If they do, what they find / can draw from the deck.

That might engage players and encourage them to return to the same area multiple times to forage for new things.

7. Update your design document if you need to, recording the key outcomes of the testing and your evaluation.

Alternative prototyping tools

Depending on your project, there are other tools that you can use to help you prototype the experience too. Ask your creator community or search online, and see what you can find!

If you’re interested in branching narrative or story in your experience, for example, you might like to try mapping the story out with sticky notes (physical or digital), or by using a tool such as Twine to create a digital prototype of the basic narrative that can also be tested.

Now that you’ve done some initial testing and evaluation of your prototype, take some time to review the interactions that you defined for the prototype of your experience.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are they still the right interactions for the experience that I want to create?
• Does the scope for the most basic prototype feel reasonable after paper prototype testing?
• Is there anything that belongs in a second iteration of the prototype, after the first basic interactions are implemented?

If you need to, update your design document to note any changes to your plan.

Tighten your scope

If you’re struggling with scoping your initial prototype, a useful approach is to rank the basic interactions in order of importance. You can then use this ranking to descope any interactions that aren’t critical for the first iteration of your prototype.

Don’t be afraid to change direction

Do you have an interaction that no longer fits with your refined vision for the experience? Don’t be afraid to cut it.

Does the experience idea lack the spark of fun that you were hoping to find, and you’re not sure how to progress it? You can go back to your initial list and choose a different idea to explore.

The process of prototyping is a journey to find what works; this not only applies to your implementation in Unity but also to the idea itself. If you try something and it doesn’t work, remember that it’s not a failure — you’re gathering the information that you need to make a great experience that's right for your target users!

This tutorial has focused primarily on planning the interactive elements of your prototype, but the visual look of your project also has an important impact on the overall experience.

Although you will use greyboxing to create the first iteration of your prototype (working primarily with basic primitives, which are often grey boxes by default), that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about the intended visual design and aesthetic now — especially if it’s critical for your experience.

There are lots of ways you can do this, including:

• Drawing basic sketches of the overall experience or key visual elements.
• Creating a digital mood board to collect references for inspiration.
• Identifying comparison experiences that take a similar approach to visual design and aesthetics in particular areas (for example, a specific film genre for lighting or a particular game’s use of color).
• Creating concept art yourself, if you are able to.

This will help you with the artistic elements you or your collaborators can add to your project, and it will also help you identify third-party assets that you could use later in development for your polished prototype.

The paper prototyping process doesn’t suit every experience, but there are lots of different low fidelity (lo-fi) ways that you can test out ideas before you start in the Unity Editor.

Take some time to research what other creators are doing and identify some resources or approaches that work well for you and your own process. It can also be helpful to discuss this topic with your network, particularly more established creators, to learn what they use to help them in the initial stages of prototyping.

So far, beyond reviewing the polished example prototype, you’ve been planning outside of Unity itself. That changes in the next tutorial — you’ll get started working on your prototype in the Unity Editor!