Team Q’s

• Is there any previous work documented that can bootstrap explorations? Any other people who can speak to the past iterations?

• What timeline constraints are we under?

• What kind of resources are we working with for development and testing

• Are there any release dates or tentpole events that we can aim to release by? (i.e. Quest 3 launch, Connect 2023, HTC Elite release)

• What deliverables can we aim for along the way? Do we have any ENG folks with bandwidth for prototyping or should we lean on visual prototypes for the majority of the exploration?

• Is there budget/need for external production vendor or contractor heads?

• What is the team bandwidth and availability for brainstorms and workshops?

Platform Q’s

• What is the main platform we’re targeting (Quest 2, pro, 3? Holo lens? Magic leap? Mobile? HTC etc) 

• What other platforms does this design feature need to interoperate with? (mobile, web?)

• Input modalities? (direct manipulation, indirect manipulation, hand tracking, dual controller, single controller (Magic Leap), voice?)

• What room awareness do we have at the system level? (surface detection? Object detection? Object tracking? Floor vs. wall vs. door, etc.)

• Are there new/shiny capabilities that we should showcase or promote?

Feature Q’s

• Is there an existing mental model of this virtual object library that the user is coming to the table with? (good to research this one)

• Did the user save these objects from somewhere else? Is this their personal inventory? Are they rewards and prizes from the Tripp app? Is it shared between multiple users?

• Is there a hardware limit for how many virtual objects can be seen on screen at  once? When does the game engine start slowing down?

• Answer as many questions from above as possible

• Research

• Competitive analysis

• Identify core user needs, problems and identify general opportunities for improvement or points of value. (i.e. other object libraries are cluttered, boring, too small, hard to navigate, etc.)

• Identify a set of core principles for how the end design should behave/feel. Give the team a chance for feedback. (i.e. should be elegant, not overwhelming, spatial, etc.)

• (Depending on scope of project) Start a Product Requirements Doc (PRD)

• Determine objectives and key results (OKR’s)

• Structure a workshop and gather the team to brainstorm.

• Have the group help sort the brainstorm ideas into an affinity diagram

• Have group mark their favorite ideas or ones they feel passionate about (this will be combined with more quantitive selection criteria in the next step)

• Brainstorm 3-6 prioritization criteria that we can use to down select the ideas with. Goal is to take ideas (often 200+) and exit with a handful of front runners

• (optional) delegate followup concepting amongst the team based on who is most passionate about a given idea (or do it myself)

• Concepting: Make super rough sketches of the top ideas so we can gather and discuss. Tweak.

• Identify 1-2 user scenarios

• Create flows by storyboarding the top ideas along the chosen scenarios

• Review with team for feedback

• Higher fidelity concepting and visual design pass

• Review with team for feedback

• Design a prototype that will compare multiple options

• Create prototype

• Run prototype with internal users for feedback

• Iterate

• Run prototype with external users for feedback

• Iterate

• Alpha

• Iterate

• Beta

• Iterate

• Launch

• Post mortem

• Meditate ❤️

• Research - Google, competitive apps, peer reviewed journals, research posts

• PRD, OKR's: Google Docs, Sheets

• UX Design - Figma, Google Suite

• UI wireframes, flows, assets - Figma, Shapes

• UR documentation, findings  - premiere, Google Sheets, Google Slides

• Sketching / prototyping - Shapes XR, ProCreate, Figma, paper + pencil, After Effects, C4D, Premiere, paper prototyping, body storming, Unity

• Presentations - Google Slides, Figma, OBS for streaming headset view

• Rooms within my house and the surfaces/objects in it (for ideation and body storming)

Many of these are "nice to have" since I understand the team may not have dedicated folks for each of these roles. In those cases, I'd do what I can to generate the work myself or find who has interest/bandwidth to assist with a given need.

• • Team - Documentation of previous sprints

  • PM (if available) - any help structuring roadmap, OKR’s, PRD

  • Team - brainstorming

  • Any additional brains who I can rope in for 1:1 convos to dissect ideas and think creatively with. 

  • Team feedback in design reviews

  • Team as stand-in users for UR

  • ENG or Prototyper - would ask if they have existing 3D object assets I can/should use while concepting (object libraries, etc)

  • ENG or Prototyper - build prototypes for early iterations or final deliveries

  • Technical artist - hone game shaders and interaction feedback visuals

  • External partners (if applies) - greenlight, feedback and signoff