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As part of ‘future cities’ your client, the Science Department has been doing some research into carbon structures that could be used for future development and technology. They would like you to help them create animated visualisations of these carbon structures so that they can educate others on the properties and characteristics of these materials. The animations will be on show to visitors to the school through Augmented Reality on printed cards.

The client would like you to visualise and animate these carbon structures in either 2D or 3D.  The animations should be exported out to a suitable format and prepared for augmented reality.

The client has provided some information of the structures for your reference.

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Deadline 20th June 2018

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Building skills for games  design & development

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Building skills for games  design & development

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17th January 2018

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It's pretty easy to find a designer willing to work on any project nowadays. Finding a professional in the area of UI design who is also familiar with best practices, however, is still an uphill battle. If you want to place yourself in contention for these kinds of positions, you'll need to remain up to date with the latest developments in the field.

Knowing the best practices to follow on every interface design project will put you far ahead of most candidates who simply fire off designs without taking into consideration the variety of details that go into the creation of an interface.

Today, we've compiled a list of ten such best practices applicable for UI design in web projects, and to get things started we're going to talk about the one of UI's biggest misconceptions.

1. Understand How UI Plays Into UX

First things first - sometimes these terms are used incorrectly, and while it's important to understand that while UI does play an important role in UX, the second discipline has a much larger scope.

This is not to say that UI isn't important, since as we all know, it can make or break a website or app. However, UX designers (or 'architects') need to take into consideration such diverse factors as interaction design and architecture, the creation of clear taxonomies, copywriting, coordination with designers and programmers, and so on. It's the overall design of an entire experience (as the acronym implies), from top to bottom.

In order to create a great interface, UI designers need to rely on information from the user experience angle, such as identifying which problems need to be solved, how the user flow will play out, and determining key product areas and hierarchies. Ideally, serious work on the interface will begin after gaining access to all of this information, then mockups will be made, tested and approved by UX designers and a product will be launched without (too many) hiccups.

2. Know Your Audience

It should come as no surprise that the most important insights into how to design a fantastic interface should be taken from your users. If you're in the planning process of launching a website, you must already have an idea of what your future audience will want, but laying out the minutiae is a whole different ballgame.

You need to have a clear picture of what needs will bring people to your website, and exactly how it will go about providing a design that will draw them in further. If you're a bit lost at this juncture, looking at the competition can be a great way to kickstart the creative process. Which websites are at the top in your project's field? Are they using similar layouts or colors? Do they adhere to similar styles or seem to cater visually to the same demographics?

Using design patterns that users are comfortable with can help ease them into your website, which you can then differentiate with your own take on their needs.

Once you've identified your audience, you can test how your design plays out among them and take their feedback into consideration. Actionable feedback from your desired target audience is incredibly valuable, so get it and use it!

3. Keep Things Simple and Consistent

The hallmark of a great interface is simplicity. By this we don't mean simply sticking a button or two here and there with some animations thrown in for the hell of it - we mean easy to understand and interact with. Your users shouldn't need a map in order to navigate through your app or website, and it's part of your job as an interface designer to subtly guide them from where they are to where they need to go.

In order to do this, you can make use of several elements such as colors, typography, feedback messages, and visual hierarchies, all of which we will cover point-by-point later on.

Interfaces must also be kept consistent throughout a design. This means not re-inventing the wheel on each part of your project, and reinforcing the most important facets of your design at each turn. As they navigate through your designs, users should be made to feel at ease with them progressively, and their immersion shouldn't be broken due to jarring stylistic choices.

4. Implement a Visual Hierarchy

The most important elements of an interface should be highlighted in order to make users focus on them, and design provides an almost endless array of methods through which to achieve this effect.

The simplest example of this technique that comes to mind would be to make an element bigger in order to turn it into a focal point (which is, incidentally, the same reason no one ignores Godzilla). Take Netflix for example - when opening up its main page you will be hit right away with a few highlighted recommendations which draw your attention by being almost impossible to ignore:

Other, more novel ways through which you can implement a visual hierarchy would be by using white space to highlight crucial parts of your interface.

Alternatively, simply introducing an unexpected element into your design in a tasteful fashion can work wonders. As we've said before, consistency in an interface is crucial, to the point where it can border on repetition. When something breaks that visual pattern, your users will sit back and take notice.

5. Make Good Use of Typography

Another elegant way to establish a visual hierarchy is through the use of typography. This isn't as simple as picking a nice font (three out of four designers swear by Comic Sans - give it a try!) and using it throughout your design, though.

For starters, every font has a personality, so to speak, and your picks should be influenced by your audience.

Size, of course, also plays a key component when using fonts in design. Important information such as headers are highlighted, much like in this very article, and as you may have noticed, throughout the entire design of the Elegant Themes blog (be careful not to highlight too much information, though!).

You can also make use of reverse type to make text stand out, by which we mean making use of contrasting backgrounds to make text pop out. In the example below, contrasting text is used in a menu to highlight which page is being viewed currently (which has the added benefit of simplifying the navigational process for your users).

Some color combinations, such as blue on red, translate terribly to reverse type, but this pitfall should be easy to avoid for any designer worth his salt.

6. Use Color and Contrast Properly

Picking the right colors for any given design is a science in and of itself. If you're reading this, chances are you're already more than passingly familiar with the psychology of colors, and as such, we won't devote any time to that area at this point.

Instead, we're going to talk about using colors to their full effect to design a stunning interface. Colors can be used to convey visual hierarchy, establish a relationship between elements, and generally elevate your designs and hold the attention of your users.

When working on an interface, you'll want to maintain some uniformity as to which colors you'll be using to convey visual cues, and keep your color scheme to a relative minimum (more colors aint always a good thing).

That said, contrasting colors can be used to great effect in order to draw users attention, as we mentioned in rule number five when discussing reverse type.

A good rule of thumb when choosing which colors to use in your interface is that darker colors tend to carry more visual weight, and these kinds of elements need to be balanced out with lighter colors.

7. Consider Feedback Messages

Interfaces are meant to be used - that is something that you should never lose sight of during the design process. And one of the biggest advantages of web projects is that you can actually design feedback messages that convey crucial information to your users when they perform an action.

Is something loading? Why not use a simple animation as a feedback message to inform your users that numbers are being crunched in the background? Did someone fill a field incorrectly? Design a message to inform them right away so they know exactly what went wrong.

In an ideal world, every interface would be intuitive and fast enough that these sort of things wouldn't happen in the first place. But trust us - users will always find new and innovative ways to break your site. Providing instant feedback as to what's going on in an intuitive manner is a great way to teach users how your interface is meant to be used.

8. Simplify Your Forms

Forms are one of the main methods through which users will interact with your web projects. It's right up there with clicking and, occasionally, cursing their computers because something isn't working properly.

The problem, however, is that most users hate forms with a burning passion, thanks to any number of reasons. Your task, therefore, is to integrate them into your interface as painlessly as possible to stop your users from cursing out their computers any more than necessary.

You might, for example, begin by asking yourself, "Is this form really necessary?". In many cases, sign ups are forced upon users for no particular reason, so if you can do away with them and not have to deal with designing an additional interface, it's a win-win scenario.

In case your project does need users to sign up, why not design the forms to be as simple as possible? Take Twitter, for example. They barely ask for any information, which means users may not have enough time to get angry for having to type in the same information for the umpteenth time.

9. Collaborate Your Way to Success

Depending on the scope of your project, at some point you might find yourself working as part of a team that can shoulder some of the work alongside you, and in such a scenario it's crucial to make sure that all members of the team share the same information in order to create a usable and appealing interface.

Thankfully, there are a lot of collaboration tools available to help a team stay on track, the best of which are well-covered here. And while we're talking about developers, you might also want to check out 8 Tips for Collaborating with Developers (A Designer's Guide).

10. Bring It All Together

Designing an interface is no simple task. You need to take multiple disciplines into consideration as well as arm yourself with technical information regarding your audience, and foresee their needs in order to create a design which will meet and rise above their needs.

Moreover, you need to maintain a close relationship between user experience design and the interface design, since one goes in hand with the other.

However, most of the rules we've covered during this article have something in common which will make your life a lot easier: they're not limited to web design projects. In fact, most of the advice we've shared so far should be very familiar to you if you've got some design experience (which we bet you do!) - all we've done is expand on their relationship with interfaces.

All in all, we're confident that taking this advice into consideration, you'll be well on your way to becoming a seasoned interface designer.

Conclusion

Interface design, while being an intimidating field, can also provide you with the perfect opportunity to up your game due to all of the areas of design it entails.

Think about it. Your interfaces need to be easy to use, simple to navigate, make use of the right colors for your audience, employ the right fonts, integrate useful feedback messages, and remain consistent overall. If you can juggle that many factors and still produce an appealing design, perhaps it's time for you to teach us some rules of web design.
In fact, let's do that. Do you have any personal rules when it comes to UI design? Share your wisdom with everyone in the comments section below! Article thumbnail image by vectorfusionart / shutterstock.com

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10 Rules of Good UI Design to Follow On Every Web Design Project

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It's pretty easy to find a designer willing to work on any project nowadays. Finding a professional in the area of UI design who is also familiar with best practices, however, is still an uphill battle. If you want to place yourself in contention for these kinds of positions, you'll need to remain up to...

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User Interface Design Basics | Usability.gov

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The goal of User Interface (UI) design is to anticipate what users might need to do and ensures that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate those actions.

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Blogs about some points to consider in assignments

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Blogs about some points to consider in assignments

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Journal and Blog | Exhibit Design Firm | Formula D interactive

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We regularly share updates and insights on the tech and projects we're working on as well as our thoughts on industry related topics. Browse our blog here!

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What does the 6 stand for in j6 design? Answer: the 6 fundamental principles of design which are: balance, proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast and space. Lets look at what each does.

The elements and principles of design are the building blocks. The elements of design are the things that make up a design. The Principles of design are what we do to those elements. How we apply the principles of design determines how successful the design is.

The elements of design

LINE - The linear marks made with a pen or brush or the edge created when two shapes meet.

SHAPE - A shape is a self contained defined area of geometric (squares and circles), or organic (free formed shapes or natural shapes). A positive shape automatically creates a negative shape.

DIRECTION - All lines have direction - Horizontal, Vertical or Oblique. Horizontal suggests calmness, stability and tranquillity. Vertical gives a feeling of balance, formality and alertness. Oblique suggests movement and action

SIZE - Size is simply the relationship of the area occupied by one shape to that of another.

TEXTURE - Texture is the surface quality of a shape - rough, smooth, soft hard glossy etc.

COLOUR - Colour is light reflected off objects. Color has three main characteristics: hue or its name (red, green, blue, etc.), value (how light or dark it is), and intensity (how bright or dull it is).

The principles of design

1. BALANCE - Balance in design is similar to balance in physics. A large shape close to the center can be balanced by a small shape close to the edge. Balance provides stability and structure to a design. It's the weight distributed in the design by the placement of your elements.

2. PROXIMITY - Proximity creates relationship between elements. It provides a focal point. Proximity doesn't mean that elements have to be placed together, it means they should be visually connected in someway.

3. ALIGNMENT - Allows us to create order and organisation. Aligning elements allows them to create a visual connection with each other.

4. REPETITION - Repetition strengthens a design by tying together individual elements. It helps to create association and consistency. Repetition can create rhythm (a feeling of organized movement).

5. CONTRAST - Contrast is the juxtaposition of opposing elements (opposite colours on the colour wheel, or value light / dark, or direction - horizontal / vertical). Contrast allows us to emphasize or highlight key elements in your design.

6. SPACE - Space in art refers to the distance or area between, around, above, below, or within elements. Both positive and negative space are important factors to be considered in every design.

Watch this video to see it in action:

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The elements and principles of design are the building blocks. The elements of design are the things that make up a design. The Principles of design are what we do to those elements. How we apply the principles of design determines how successful the design is.

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Google can now add 3D assets provider to its list of services, as it announced a new platform called Poly last night (UK time) much to the delight of VR and AR developers. Poly is a platform where anyone can browse and download free 3D objects and scenes.
Google created Poly specifically with VR and AR apps in mind, such as its own Tilt Brush and Blocks (Poly is fully integrated with both of these). However, the objects are all in OBJ format, so can be downloaded in applications from Cinema 4D and Maya to Adobe's new Dimension software (neé Project Felix).

See how it works in the video below.

Google hopes Poly will make it easier to create and develop in 3D, according to Google's blog post published last night. You can search thousands of free models to use in your VR and AR apps - everything from a robot or ice-cream cone to entire 'Alien World' or 'Winter Island'. Users can create a profile to keep track of uploads or "likes", and can sift through helpful categories such as animals & creatures, architecture, places & scenes or technology, to name a few.

There's also an option to 'remix' or manipulate many of the models you find too, so if a robot needs more arms, you can add some in.

Click like to import a remixable object into Tilt Brush or Blocks and make changes; Poly will automatically credit and link to the original creation when you publish your remix.

Poly allows direct OBJ file upload, so whether you're creating "an intense space walk in VR, or a serene garden of AR flowers, you'll find the ingredients you need", Google says.

Google suggests Poly for developers building for VR, Google's ARCoreor Apple's new ARKit.

But don't assume Poly is only for developers - anyone can use Poly to view 3D objects in a mobile or desktop browser, and once you find something you like, you can create a GIF and share it, or view it in other VR applications.

Google's Poly announcement follows Adobe also releasing 3D assets to Adobe Stock this year, as well as 3D editing software Dimension, announced at Adobe Max.
For more websites where you can download 3D assets, see our 5 best websites (paid) for 3D assets or our 7 best websites for free 3D models.

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Download thousands of free 3D models from Google's new platform

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Google can now add 3D assets provider to its list of services, as it announced a new platform called Poly last night (UK time) much to the delight of VR and AR developers. Poly is a platform where anyone can browse and download free 3D objects and scenes.

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These fresh, talented under-30 graphic designers & illustrators are killin' it

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US non-profit, The One Club for Creativity, has named 32 young creatives from 2017 to watch out for, including Jing Wei and Hattie Stewart.

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Useful reading. Design tips:

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Get your graphic design game-face on with these inspiring tips.

Whether you're a creating graphics for social media or designing an invitation for an upcoming event, the application of graphic design is vast and versatile. From font pairing and scale, to alignment and white space, the facets of the design world are complex. Let these 26 epic design tips help you through the pits and the peaks of the creative process.

Click on the 'remix this design' link throughout the post to create your own designs .

01. For font's sake, limit your typefaces

02. Don't be scared of scale

03. Respect the space of other elements

Use letter spacing to fill dead space, aligning text, or condense words that take up too much space. However, be careful not to reduce letter spacing so much it can't be read, or increase it so much the letters become detached from one another. Here, the decreased letter spacing on the word 'Respect' gives a condensed effect, as a visual representation of space, or lack thereof.

04. Be clever with your colors

05. Clean, crisp, clear

06. Fonts have feelings too

07. Create order with alignment

08. Keep it simple

09. Multi-page magic

10. Creativity and originality

Push your creative abilities and graphic design skills to achieve original graphics. Be inventive and experimental and choose and combine different typefaces and filters. Avoid trends and create designs that correspond with your own unique style, leaving a personal stamp on your work.

11. Use hierarchy to order your content

12. Play with symmetry

13. Relax your eyes every now and then

14. Keep it in the family

15. Wonderful white space

16. Research before you dive in

17. Create a mood board

18. Imitate and create

Use your Canva social stream or inspiration websites to find designs you love. Replicate the type treatment, the photo filters or the general layout in your own content.

19. Be current event conscious

20. Think outside the box

21. Contrast is key

22. Brighten up your graphics

23. Keep a notebook

24. Trial & error

25. No naked images

We're not talking image content here, we're talking layout. Aligning images with grids or frames makes a design look more professional.

26. Finesse. But not too much.

YOUR TURN

Remember: be creative, break the rules and push your design skills by coming up with new and innovative ideas. At the end of the day, graphic design is about exploration and experimentation.

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Get your graphic design game-face on with these inspiring tips. Whether you're a creating graphics for social media or designing an invitation for an upcoming event, the application of graphic design is vast and versatile. From font pairing and scale, to alignment and white space, the facets of the design world are complex.

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useful reading!

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I've got to get product out. In the panic and dizziness, my head smashes against the CRT and next thing I know this genie whiffs up out of a virtual bronze-texture-mapped lamp and offers me three wishes. Without missing a beat, I answer, "I need...

A great team of talented, skilled, and dedicated engineers and artists (including a very understanding wife) with strong interpersonal skills.

Enough time and money to allow for a mess-up or two.

A first class design document.

Once upon a time, when coding a game involved one programmer (and maybe an artist) with a take-it-as-you-go budget and a loose deadline, documentation didn't need to be taken so seriously. You knew what you wanted to make and you made it. If there were a few major changes along the way, the only one to complain was you. Nowadays, a thorough and readable document can mean the difference between a swift descent to budgetless Hell and a smooth ride to shrinked-wrapped Nirvana.
How the System Works
Most games go through three development stages, from concept to design to production. Think of them as "flash," "paper," and "grind."

In the first stage, the concept paper acts both as a letter to yourself - setting out your goals clearly so you won't lose sight of them - and as a sales tool for whomever takes the product to market down the road. Sometimes, this stage involves a working mini-prototype as well, which gives you a chance to experiment and revise your ideas.

The intermediate stage of design involves a lot of discussions with artists, animators, musicians, and engineers - trying things out, and finding ways to organize and set down your ideas.

In the final stage, production management is often left up to some expert in moving trains and tracks without major collisions. The original designer may be an integral part of the team, but in many cases - especially in large companies - the designer ends up as a kind of outside consultant.

Without question, the design document is where the original parent of the project exercises the most influence on how this little baby is going to grow up. Even if you, the designer, have decided to double as project manager, don't delude yourself into thinking that you hold all the reins. A complex project involves many talented people. Skilled programmers and artists tend to have minds of their own. While you intend to create a horse, the artist may be envisioning a unicorn and the programmer a highly efficient camel. A good document ensures that you are all planning to make the same thing. A great document ensures you all have the same feel for the inner soul of this thing. Think of it as a big band jazz score - it puts everybody's mind in the same place, even when there's still plenty of room for the stars to improvise.

Your document is a sort of intermediary between your mind and the real world. It ensures that what you have in mind is something that the real world is able to handle, and that what you end up with will be what you originally had in mind.

Finally, remember the adage to which any salty gamer will attest: "Great art is in the details." Brilliant details flow naturally from the general gestalt as though they were present in that first flash of inspiration. But once you get into the hands-on implementation, it's easy to lose that spark.
The Challenge
Prototyping parts of the project yourself is definitely a good idea - make whatever rough sketches you can. But again, it's those details that count. The more details your imagination can hold, the greater a masterpiece your work will be.

Working from a document has a flip side, as well. Developing an exciting game has to be exciting. Some of the best parts of many projects were discovered in the heat of last-minute deadline panic. True, the pressures of time and cost budgeting don't allow for perpetual reiteration of concept, but you simply cannot expect a killer game to come out of dry, predictable work. The challenge is to create a design document that will allow your project to tolerate surprise adaptations without losing the integrity of its original direction and scope.

Table 1. The three stages of documentation.

1. Concept Paper
Genre; target audience; description; most compelling features; market information; cost and time to develop.

It defines the concept, scope, worthiness and feasibility; sells the idea to your client, publisher, employer, and venture capitalist.

2. Design Document
Description of the body and soul of the entire project, with all the details, and the method by which each element will be implemented.

It ensures that what is produced is what you want to produce.

3. Production Documents
Time-management charts (Gantt, PERT, and so on); task database; budget spreadsheet; technical specifications; Q/A database.

It implements the design document on time and within budget.

Ten Points for a Successful Design Document
1. DESCRIBE NOT JUST THE BODY, BUT THE SOUL. If game development was just an automated input/output issue - something like writing code and being able to predict how it's going to work - you could get by with a dry, descriptive document. The reality is that development is done by people, many of them creative people, who have their own minds; most will want to leave a stamp of that mind on everything they do.

It works like this: You provide specs to the artists and discuss with them what to do. You then visit the programmers and go over their specs. Both groups nod to everything you say.

That night, around 2AM, just as the constellation of C++ is rising in the west, the programmer reaches a mid-life crisis and begins to think, "What, a geek programmer the rest of my life? Is this what my mother expected from me? Why, I can design a game just as well as anybody else!" And the hands keep typing code.

Around the same time, the artist has just woken up before his machine, having fallen into a deep stupor while waiting for a complex 3D rendering to finish. Unsure and not really caring whether he's dreaming or is actually getting paid for all this, immersed in that wild world of artistic genius where fantasy and reality blend as one, the phosphors come together in ways previously unimagined - certainly not by you.

By the next morning, your horse has become a unicorn with two humps. With creative people, instructing is not good enough. You need to inspire.

In your design document, don't satisfy yourself with a detailed description of every article and nuance. Take time to describe the feel that the game should have, the purpose behind each element, the experience each user will have, and any other aspects of the game's soul you can envision and describe.

For example, say you're designing a shooter. You want to train your players to deal with certain challenges before they actually meet them, so you place less lethal mini-challenges a few steps in advance. You're going to have to explain that to everybody on the development team, so they'll understand why certain things are where they are and why they work the way they do. That way, even if (read: when) your team toys with and mangles your ideas as they exist on paper, you can still harbor hopes that the outcome will have the same or similar overall effect. Or maybe even better.

2. MAKE IT READABLE. Go ahead, provide your people with full pages of 10-point, sans serif, 80-characters-per-line text, and demand that they read it. You may want to bundle Advil in the package - for those who actually take the pains to obey orders.

I try to follow at least some of the guidelines of good page layout.

Plenty of white space

Serif font for body text

Bold headers

Spaces between paragraphs

Short lines of text

Direct the eye towards important material

Use a hierarchical, "2D" format (see what I wrote about outliners in the "Design Documentation Tools" sidebar)

Many instances call for a table, spreadsheet, or chart. Use them and make them sensibly attractive.

3. PRIORITIZE. Now that you realize that you're working with other conscious egos, you'll appreciate the urgency of tagging certain game elements as sacred. True, there are no guarantees, but if you use the tag sparsely enough, it may get some respect. But don't stop there. As long as you're tagging ideas, you'll also want to distinguish between things that you intend to do and things that you'd like to do if time, budget, skill sets, and technicalities permit.

Then there's the trash bin - things that sounded great, but were trashed for good reason. Refer to them explicitly and explain the reason that they were trashed. If you don't, I can almost guarantee that they will be resurrected. Here's your list of tags:

You may wish to use visual symbols to represent these. Don't rely on color, since documents aren't always printed in color.

4. GET INTO THE DETAILS. A document without details is useless. Generalities can be interpreted by anybody in any way that they like. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" meant one thing to Moses and another to a Spanish conquistador. Detailing whom you shouldn't kill and under which circumstances would have been more helpful. The same holds true for your document: Once you've described some practical details and given some examples, your idea becomes more concrete - and harder to shove around.

For example, don't just say, "Bronze bird is invincible." Describe exactly what happens to this creature in each possible instance of its being hit, and how it recovers afterward. True, if the animator has any spunk and artistic dignity, you can rest assured that he won't follow your specifications. But at least he'll have a clear idea of what you want to achieve, and his modifications won't seriously alter the related portions of the game.

Don't just say, "At this point, users will have to press the jump key with the arrow key to climb the wall." Describe what will happen if a player tries anything else. Explain why you think users will be able to figure out the combination that you've provided. Explain what about the environment suggests that it's possible to climb this wall.

Again, your artist will come up with something else, perhaps something even more suitable than what you originally conceived. That's real success: When your developers' results come out even closer to your original flash of conception than what you were able to describe on paper. But this won't happen unless you first lucidly describe your concept.

Don't just say, "Bongo Man is stronger than Bongo Boy, but Boy has faster reflexes." Use tables, spreadsheets, and charts to assign real values to the character's speed of movement, how many hits the character can take, how much damage the character's hits do, how many cels it takes to animate a hit, and so on. This sort of spreadsheet is invaluable in the Q/A and tweaking stages of production.

Don't just say, "Most people will figure out the whole game in a few days." Make a chart of predicted product life in different households, indicating at which points in time you expect various features to be discovered. User testing will later provide valuable feedback for designing your next game.

5. SOME THINGS MUST BE DEMONSTRATED. Sometimes a few rough sketches are enough, but if the idea is truly important to your concept of the project, you may want to make a rough animation yourself. When behaviors of elements become too complex and ambiguous to describe on paper, you'll want to make a prototype. A side benefit of prototyping is that this practice often leads to a simpler, more elegant solution.

Even when you provide animations and prototypes, put the concept in words as well. True, an animation is worth a gigabyte of words, but words can communicate in ways that animations can't. Words also clearly spell out the vital nuances that may be missed when watching the animation.

6. NOT JUST "WHAT" BUT "HOW." In the real world, the "how" determines the "what." For example, suppose you've opted for claymation. Work out the process of how the images will be captured and document everything. What material and what color should the backdrop be? What camera should be used and why? What are the steps for processing the captured frames? And on and on. If you've tried it, you'll know that any one of these factors can have a serious impact on the end result.

Or suppose you're working on a motorcycle racing game. You state that the motorbikes must be balanced by their differing pros and cons. You even provide a chart that shows how balanced they are. Then you state that tweaking will be necessary. State how you plan to tweak - what is the process? Suppose the main character in your game is the Phantom of the Opera. Describe how the player's keyboard is mapped as a pipe organ. Provide a map of each key. Specify how many channels of sound will be available. Talk it over with your programmer and work out every detail of how. Then document it. Two different "hows" can mean two very different results.

7. PROVIDE ALTERNATIVES. Project managers spend a lot of time with their Gantts and PERTs. Personally, I can't really say that this stuff is effective for game development - principally because there are just so many unknowables. The more radical and pioneering your game technology, the less predictable the development stream is going to be. The best thing you can do to ensure that your team reaches your milestones on schedule is to provide more than one way of doing things.

Lets go back to the keyboard as pipe organ example. Your engineer describes to you the ultimate method of getting awesome and funky results with tremendous power and depth to the user - at a cost of about 50 person-hours to implement. As with everything else we've discussed, you document the whole thing.

You can't stop there. You've got to ask, "What would it take if we just wanted a trimmed-down, eight-channel pipe-organ? And what will we need to achieve the bare minimum? And what if we just had some assistant doing this?" And then you document all that as well. When the FedEx truck is on its way over for the final daily pickup, you'll be able to save your skin with a simple, "OK, do Plan C."

One of the biggest mistakes I've made in product design is asking engineers, "Can it be done?" Unless you're asking a first-class programmer, the question is useless. More specifically, responses fall into one of three categories:

(Lousy programmer) "Sure, that's no problem."

(Mediocre programmer) "Nope. Can't be done."

(First-class programmer) "I could do it like this and it'll take two weeks. Or I could make a slight modification like this and it'll take five hours."

Always ask for more than one alternative and an estimate of how long each will take. Then indicate your preference - do this is if we have time, or this if we don't.

8. GIVE IT A LIFE. I've already warned you against strangling the inspiration and spontaneous creativity that comes with the excitement and fun of seeing ideas become living objects in your hands. You've got to allow your document to tolerate change - by you or by (hopefully intelligent) others.

I first learned this lesson as a music composition major at the University of British Columbia. With much toil, I had written a neo-renaissance brass quintet of which I was quite proud. My professor liked it, too. When we brought it to the college's star brass quintet for rehearsal, however, I passed through several stages of horror, disbelief, indignation, and clinical depression within ten seconds. The quintet began to play, then stopped on signal from the tuba player. The fellow took out his pencil and began to change a few notes, and then everyone continued. It happened more than once.

My professor, noting my sudden faint state of health, turned to me and commented, "Don't worry, they did that to Mozart as well. And they're usually right."

The fact is, no matter how good something looks on paper, the greatest expert still modifies things when it enters the concrete world of objective perception. Nevertheless, you don't want to witness the ruthless rape of your design and dreams. Rather, you're hoping for a kind of organic growth - ideas growing naturally out of the seeds you've planted without needing foreign limbs and bodies grafted onto them.

Here are some tips for creating a document that can tolerate change without corrupting the original idea or sabotaging the development process:

Make certain to engrave in stone those aspects that are so essential to the game concept that they must not be changed.

Make certain everybody understands the feel that the game is supposed to have and the purpose of each of its details.

If information is repeated, it must be cross-referenced. Otherwise, if there are changes, you can end up with contradictory instructions.

And here are some tips for the actual implementation stage:

When a change is suggested, check back in your design document and see if it is in concordance with the "soul" of your game.

Check whether this is just an isolated change, or it's of major global ecological impact (see "The Ecology of Improvement"). If it's the latter, save it for your next project.

Update the design document and include the reasons for the change. Or if you didn't make the change, say so and explain why it was rejected.

Changes, deletions, and rejected ideas should be retained in a master document to avoid discussing the same thing twice.

Everyone must be working from the same version. Past versions should be destroyed.

Crucial, Vital, and Urgent: The design document must be maintained under one person's supervision only.

9. NOBODY SHOULD BE ABLE TO SAY, "I DID IT THAT WAY BECAUSE I COULDN'T FIND ANY REFERENCE TO IT IN THE DOCUMENT." I've seen documents that didn't even have the pages numbered. And then they complain that people didn't follow instructions. Every good word processor will auto-number pages and print the date and title in the header or footer of every page. Some will even allow you to change the header at new chapters. Use bold text to direct attention to important material. Repeat yourself in different parts of the document as much as you like, as long as you cross-reference so you can update everything together as well. Make a thorough Table of Contents.

You may wish to write your document using HTML and provide hot links. Some progressive word processors provide hot link capabilities without HTML. But remember that more often than not, people prefer to work from a hard copy. (That way there's something to read while rebooting after the hourly system crash.)

10. DELIVER IT IN GOOD CONDITION. After all this, you need to do whatever you can to facilitate everyone actually reading and using the thing. A pile of papers doesn't get read - it doesn't look important enough. Only things with hard covers look important.

Create a list of everyone who is supposed to have a copy. Keep the list. Print out the whole thing with the date in the header of each page. Have holes made and put it in binders. Label the spine and cover of each binder. When there are updates, provide everyone with the revised pages. At some points, you may need to provide new books and throw out the old ones.
In Sum Check...
Movie makers use move scripts. Architects use blueprints. Musicians use a score. According to ancient hearsay evidence, even the Cosmic Creator created a design document - which He later let a few prophets take a peek at - before the primal "Let there be light!" So game developers, following their Supernal Role Model, can certainly do the same. Do it right and it's smooth sailing the rest of the way.

Tzvi Freeman teaches Game Design and Documentation at Digipen School of Computer Gaming in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He has designed several commercial games and has acted as a consultant on many others. He can be reached at [email protected] .

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