CS247G was such an incredible, and interactive experience that taught me how to apply design principles in a really fun practical domain! Before entering the class, I thought of game design as an unstructured and purely creative or strategy-driven endeavor. I thought that professional-grade game design was particularly reserved to the design/developers of many gaming companies such as EA Sports, Roblox, Blizzard, and more. Further, I was drawn to CS247G because I couldn’t understand the relevance of human-computer interaction or human-centered design principles within game design because games seemed to be purely about entertainment rather than real-world utility. However, CS247G showed me how concepts from HCI like affordances, cognitive modeling, and critical theory are crucial for creating intuitive, captivating and satisfying game interfaces and mechanics.
One key class experience that stuck with me was the active playtesting with all of our games, which allowed our team to consistently conduct rapid prototyping and iteration on our final product. This was a special experience for me because while at larger companies such as Microsoft or Amazon, the standard for product development and creation was to create a product requirements document (PRD) and develop the product in sprints based on this design document. On the other hand, the extensive playtesting and iterative approach to game design allowed our team to identify pain points, confusing mechanics, and areas that fell flat in our design before getting too committed to it. This focus on continuously validating against real user experiences prevented us from getting trapped by initial assumptions or designs.
On the flip side, playtesting other peoples’ games was equally rewarding as a game designer and developer. By playtesting others’ games, I was exposed to novel gameplay mechanics that inspired new creative directions for my own games; learning from the creative visions and artistic natures of my own peers was a really valuable collaborative process. Playing other games also strengthened my ability to critique interaction designs through an HCI lens, identifying usability issues, violations of certain design principles, and opportunities for improvement to maximize the 8 types of fun underpinning games.
If there is also a favorite moment in the class for me, it must be Christina’s workshop on how to represent complex entities in simple, creative, and entertaining sketches 🙂 Such sketches not only helped me while completing my sketch-notes, but also during design prototyping and iteration. Being able to quickly sketch out ideas for characters, environments, and gameplay allowed our team to explore diverse possibilities without getting bogged down in technical details early on.
Ultimately, this class showed me the value of an iterative, user-centered design process for creating compelling interactive experiences, in contrast to developing based solely off requirements documents. Along with understanding macro-level biases in the game industry and ideas under critical feminist theory, I’ll continue working on products both in industry and academia that prioritize an inclusive, human-centered approach to design and development. The hands-on experience with rapid prototyping, user testing, and actively applying HCI principles will serve me well as I embark on a career in product next.
