<aside> đź’ˇ Development Lifecycle for MR draws inspiration from a couple of different disciplines: engineering, creative media productions, etc.
Being an evolving field there are no established paradigms yet, so the actual process is still up for debate and exploration.
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Teams are often composed of a mix of development, design, research, and management. All roles should participate in the design process. The barrier to entry for contributing an idea for a mobile app is as simple as drawing a rectangle for the device’s screen. However for MR development things get complicated due to the spatial nature of technology, drawing in 3D is not the most intuitive. Thus we need to use non traditional techniques to enable everyone to contribute.
The suggested approach follows Bodystorming, Acting and Storyboarding for design.
Bodystorming is a technique used to quickly generate ideas and evaluate ideas that are too nebulous to prototype.
Simple, physical props are used to level the playing field for participants, allowing individuals with different skillsets and backgrounds to contribute ideas, e.g. using folded cardboards to simulate the “unfolding” of experience in the spatial realm.
Detailed artwork or precise measurements aren't important at this stage. Physical props need only meet the minimum requirements to explore or communicate an idea. Ideas presented through bodystorming are not expected to be fully vetted, but the process can help narrow down possibilities to test.
The next step is to simulate a walkthrough. It often involves staging how a user would move through the experience or a specific interaction.
The idea is to get participants to explore the user’s perspective, and for outside observers to see how the events play out.
Depending on domain, you might want to involve domain experts for the acting stage. e.g. if you are designing a product for science lab, get some lab coats!
Many times acting can run together with bodystorming.
These are used to present the overall grand vision of products. Consider something like a user-journey map, or a comic strip of the whole end to end experience. This is especially useful as you present to bigger audiences, leadership rounds at companies (can’t expect the board to dance around). Depending on the audience and maturity of the process one could go for a high or low fidelity storyboard.
For rapid iterations and discussions low fidelity boards are preferred purely due to frequency of changes. As the product/ideas mature its ideal to move towards high fidelity storyboards.