Delightful Experiences

Good design grows passion

Capturing and Creating Nostalgia

Nostalgia is one of the most powerful tools for evoking a positive response in users. As someone who likes to apply my design thinking to anything I tackle, I leaned into this when creating my yearly Halloween bash for my friends. The theme: Pokemon. The challenge: to re-create that wonder many of us had as kids when playing the game and evoke the same feeling in adults who knew nothing about it.

The process of design and development took about six months between props, minigames, and clever real-world recreations of in-game concepts. The key, however, was focusing on the question ‘what do you remember most from pokemon?’

For some, it was bonding with their team of cute critters. For others, it was particular places, like a big monster sleeping in the middle of a road or the creepy music that played in a particular town. It even included gameplay elements, such as identifying seemingly identical ghosts using a special item. And although we incorporated all these elements the key to capturing our friends’ delight was in the game’s slogan: the excitement of catching ‘em all.

So we made a scavenger hunt. We let our partygoers solve game-themed riddles and see familiar friends, all as part of collecting the 60 types of pokemon we had hidden around our property. We expected maybe two people to finish finding them all over the course of the party, probably less because we got hit by freezing rain and half the activities were outside.

8 teams finished and earned their souvenir badges that night. Several teams had people who’d never played the game once in their lives. When I asked them about it afterward, it turned out they were seeking the same thing we’d heard from those who were enjoying the warm hum of nostalgia - the thrill of completing a challenging but cute collection.

Delight for Developers

Bringing a smile to a user’s face is important, but what about the people working on the project? Not long ago, I was in charge of game design for a short maker’s challenge where my team of friends and I, all newbies to practical game development, hoped to learn some new skills. We only had two weeks to complete our game from start to finish while also balancing our full-time jobs or schooling. The question of delight for once was more for us developers than our users: how could we choose a game to develop that was on-theme but also made us excited to work on it despite our wildly different game tastes?

In the end, a mindmap around the theme, pitch brainstorming exercise, and simple voting did the trick. What had been a difficult conversation about favorite genres became focused on one idea that got all of us excited to give it our best shot.

Although we didn’t release the game due to an unexpected illness slowing our progress, we did finish an internal alpha with mostly custom assets within two weeks.

That might not sound like much, but considering we were all new to almost every aspect of developing this game (Unity, 3D modeling and animation, sound design, level design, and game engine development), it’s a testament to the passion poured into this challenge. Choosing the right project and the delight that came from working on that project massively increased our ability to learn and produce work.

Breaking New Ground

Nothing is more exciting than designing in unexplored territory. And with VR slowly becoming more affordable, there is a whole new field ripe for creative thinking. Right now, much of VR is focused on how to recreate inaccessible areas of the real world, develop the perfect virtual chatroom, or make you feel like you’re in your favorite video games. However, my experience with VR has led me to believe there are more opportunities beyond simulations.

In the effort of exploring ideas of companionship and safety within a virtual space for those who could benefit from an escape, I’m in the early stages of designing the ever-popular staple: an interactive pet. I want to explore a multitude of concepts to evoke that delightful feeling of closeness. Things like what level of interactivity and realism is needed to bond with a virtual creature, what kind of motion is non-disruptive without destroying the feeling of immersion, and whether it’s possible to incorporate challenge while avoiding the fight-or-flight response that happens with combat-simulation games. I want to explore the meaning of empowerment in the space of VR, and hope to eventually expand testers to people of as many diverse backgrounds and experiences as possible.

This journey is just beginning - I look forward to sharing more design documents as our prototypes become reality!