I have been making games and eLearning products for kids for 13 years. Been at Mind Candy for 4 years as Game Design & Product Manager.

Going to run through the Discovery Process of Game Design as I see at Mind Candy and how I think it relates to Product Management.

Personally I have the found the tenants of Product Management (making relevant; valuable; feasible stu�) to be very useful when ap-proaching Game Design.

Introduction

- Mind Candy from Hunches to Heuristics- Company & Product Discovery- Finding Fun is an Adventure- Seek Mastery: Types of User & Fun- Lightweight Toolbox- Discovery Part I: Ideation- Discovery Part II: Validation- Iterate- Summary

Agenda

Mind Candy from Hunches to Heuristics

Mind Candy has achieved success in multiple industries with a rela-tively small team- No. 1 Kids Print Mag- No. 1 Toy Brand in UK- No.1 Kids web game in UK and strong in ROW

Agile & Product Management allows us to be very e�ective with small teams.

Very fortunate now to have a good Product Management function (including 1 week Marty Cagan master class which helped to educate the whole company)

Mind Candy from Hunches to Heuristics

Didn't always used to be like this:Started with a skilled core team who ran on gut instinct and hunches.

Made awkward design decisions and couldn't always maintain integ-rity of design across our whole product (as I'm sure any Agile Game Designer has unfortunately experienced)

However, we executed a lot faster than our competition and got to the fabled tipping point.

When we had a winner on our hands, we started to double down on the science of success as we obviously wanted to repeat this fre-quently as possible.

As we grew, two things happened simultaneously:Company-wide Discovery & Product/ Feature Discovery

Company Discovery:Business wanted to know where we would be in 3, 6, 12 months from now.

We introduced OKRs to chart our direction and to align all depart-ments.

The 3 month heartbeat of OKRs work well for a modern fast moving company.

Company & Product Discovery

OKRs also imposed some necessary deadlines for features and whole products.

Whilst it's tempting to say that the product will ready when its ready, it is necessary to impose some constraints on resource and time.

It was time for the product teams to work out how to reliably deliver value within certain timeframes

Company & Product Discovery

Product teams reacted by improving our Discovery process.

(i.e. Finding something valuable to do and validating it before you start formal implementation)

The diamond represent the standard ‘Double Diamond’ of the design and discovery process.

The yellow diamond represents that you have to do enough Discov-ery and start out informed before you can entertain the idea of dead-lines.

Company & Product Discovery

Discovery for games is all about �nding fun.

Finding Fun is NOT a journey that can be easily planned upfront. Es-pecially for games. Especially for kid's games.

Its an inexact science. Party unknowable because you discover Fun as you create.

Can we always Find Fun?

ANS: Yes, if we look hard enough. BUT, time is of the essence!

Discovery for Games

Understanding and respecting your environment gives you a head start and saves time (doesn’t have to cost lots of money).

Understand and study other games:- Nintendo games are a good place to start- Loads of great physical & board games out there too

Understand your user:- Kids on Chris Evans Breakfast Show; Diary of a Wimpy Kid- Read psychology papers, books and blogs- Run focus groups & surveys

Mastery You Shall Seek

Example of what can go on inside a kid’s head.

Letter from boy to a weatherman who visited his school.

The more glimpses we collect of our users, the better we can under-stand and serve them.

Mastery You Shall Seek

Knowing your user will help you meet their needs and expectations which saves you time.

So much variation with gender and age.

There are as many di�erent play styles as there are di�erent models to describe personas.

Find models that work for you

Previous slide is based on research by Lizzie Jackson and David Gauntlett:http://home.wmin.ac.uk/docs/MAD/AM/S02_SP03-LizzieJackson.pdf

Master Types of User

Knowing about di�erent types of fun will help you engage kids on di�erent levels in the short, medium and long-term.

Nicole Lazzaro's 4 types of Fun:- Hard Fun: Goals, Obstacles, Strategies- People Fun: Communicate, Cooperate, Compete- Easy Fun: Exploration; Fantasy; Creativity- Serious Fun: Repetition, Rhythm; Collection

http://www.nicolelazzaro.com/the4-keys-to-fun/

Easy Fun is really important for kids. Especially silly, whimsy, slapstick - crude humour

Find models that work for you

Master Types of Fun

Set yourself up to move quickly.

Must move quickly because the more ideas we play with, the more fun we will �nd.

Quick: Paper & pencil; post-its and sharpies - Paper app

Precise: Omnigra�e, Google Docs

Low-Fidelity: Flash; Construct; Stencyl, HTML + jquery

Clearly communicate that you're prototyping; use rough visuals while prototyping behaviour - otherwise you will become frustrated when people start trying to ship your un-validated work!

Toolbox

Discovery is a 2 step process. First start with Ideation .(This is where we open up the Discovery Diamond)

Collect & welcome ideas from everywhere.

Don't kill ideas too early; don’t edit yourself.

Be concerned if you don't end up with several alternative ideas.

Use your Toolbox to Prototype and test quickly by any means.

Discovery Part I: Ideation

This was an example of using lightweight tools to prototype and ex-plore ideas quickly.

I wanted a persistent cumulative highscore, but didn't have time to program it, so we just recorded kid's score on the wall using post-it notes.

When they hit milestones we gave them some Moshi Cards.

Discovery Part I: Ideation

The second step in Discovery is Validation.(This is where we begin �ltering ideas and close the Discovery Dia-mond)

Check if you've found the fun.

Use Mastery, Prototyping and Tests to reduce options.

Know when something's wrong - sometimes we become too at-tached, but Validation should show us what’s simply not working.

We are NOT children.You won't really know if you're Found some Fun until you put it in front of kids.

Discovery Part II: Validation

This picture is obviously wrong!

Sometimes we invest in products too emotionally and we can’t see that what we’re building is wrong.

Discovery Part II: Validation

I wanted to add a puzzle game to Moshi and started to research and play all the puzzle games we could.

We soon found and fell in love with Puzzli and started prototyping something similar. We then fell in love with the prototype.

In truth, we prototyped too long without validating with users.

We had to go through a couple of rounds of play testing and major tweaks before we held our hands up and said it wasn’t working.

However, we learnt a lot about NodeJS (and have adopted it) and learnt a lot about of users and went on to build something more rel-evant and valuable.

Moshi Example

Iterate on Ideation and Validation.(This is essentially the Double Diamond approach to design)

We don't do big design upfront (we might spend too much e�ort going in the wrong direction).

We do quick slices because it helps us validate if we've found the fun more quickly.

After you have proved your core idea, do some more discovery.

(but know when something's wrong)

Iterate

"Startups that don't have a product/ market �t don't need growth hackers." Andrew Chen, Sep 2012

"Games that haven't found fun, don't need optimisation."

Martyn Jones, just now

When trying to Find the Fun for a kid's game, it is extremely risky to execute a single idea.

To mitigate risk, start out informed, spread your bets, then build and validate your ideas as frequently as possible.

Decent games need a decent discovery process - and I think a chunk of that needs to be done before anyone commits to any deadlines.

If Product Management is about knowing the user and the market and discovering the most relevant, valuable and feasible thing to do, then a Product Manager's best friend is the Product Designer.

For games, that's the Game Designer.

Summary