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Iteration, Design and all that

I am somewhere in the last stages of designing a game. I have been in the last stages for 3 months now. But each time I see it with a fresh pair of eyes (of my users or my collaborators), it is excruciatingly tough to change what I knew or thought I always knew. Over 20 playtests with approx 80-100 folks and about a 100 odd hours of testing and iteration led us to keep seeing thing that were blind to us.

For instance, a design which I thought was working well is now being comprehended in a different way. In order to make that right, I have had to change my thought/approach and come at it from a new lens. 

We made many changes as we engaged with users and bit by bit the change has happened. And yes, we could see the improvement of the way the users engaged in the next test. Colours had to be changed. Text. Visuals. Rules. We had to simplify things. We had to explain things we thought were obvious. And things which we thought were difficult - users wanted a degree of complexity as well. So, we worked on them, tweaked and retweaked and got it to closure.

I made a rulebook - the users dont know what to do with it. I made a design of a card - the users cant comprehend what to do with the card. Both these, as painful as they are to see your pet design evoke confused reactions and polite actions - indicate that your user is just not getting it - but it also means (mostly) that you havent thought of the user enough. And so we practically rewrote the rulebook.

And we are finally close to launch.

Phew. 

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