The prototyping process is a great opportunity for creativity and fun. The fun designers have during this stage is a good indicator of how much fun people will have with the final design. When it comes to video games, the Wii has shown that fun trumps core features like graphics and processing power.

I had my first chance to really play with a Wii a few weeks ago, and I was blown away at the simple joy of playing Wii Sports with the Wii Remote, both of which are bundled with the Wii system. They felt like they had been designed together to work in beautiful harmony. It turns out they were, through a process of rapid prototyping and fun.

“So we really had a whole range of different sample controllers, for each of which we were tailoring specific prototype software. As Tennis was one of the games born out of that, it wasn’t actually the result of a clear intention to develop something specific….Once we’d produced it, it was immediately apparent how well it worked.
- Katsuya Eguchi, Producer of Wii Sports

So it seems that the Wii Remote was chosen as the controller for the new gaming system partly because of how fun it was to use with the prototype games created for it. They were so fun, that their attention turned to how to turn the prototypes into real games.

“During the development of the Remote, we did a range of trials to see what it was capable of. The prototype software we used included things like a baseball game…Wii Sports came about as a result of our discussions about how to turn these into fully-fledged games.”

It seems a little risky to bundle prototype games when bringing a new system to market, but it turns out that because the hardware of the controller was prototyped along with the games it worked quite well. And the fun the developers themselves had building and testing the prototypes is apparent in the final product.

“Well, it was quite fun. Actually, it was a lot of fun! How can I put this…? It is much more fun to get new controllers one after the other, and then develop software as the inspiration takes you, than it is to try to think of new things to do with just one conventional controller, as we have up to now. ”
Keizo Ota, director of Tennis for Wii Sports

So how does play and fun factor into your prototyping? Are you having enough fun with what you design?

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