Tony Hawk's Project 8: One of the many, many games in the Tony Hawk video game franchise

The franchise, while extremely successful, was in need of a ‘reboot’ of sorts.  It had explored all the available terrain and the development team was looking for a way to bring something new to the franchise.  What they arrived at, was a skateboard peripheral to play the game that more closely paralleled the act of skateboarding in real life.  What they created was a peripheral that forced the user to act in a very similar fashion to a skateboarder in order to be successful in the game.  The end product is a very slick, functional peripheral that allows a fairly capable skater to jump right in and get the hang of the game fairly quickly.  What I find perhaps even more interesting than the end result however, is the interim stage that allowed the developers to truly believe that the idea was a viable one that would catch on in the mainstream, similar to the insanely popular Guitar Hero franchise and Rockband franchise.

The Tony Hawk Ride Prototype

While at first glance, it would be very easy to dismiss this prototype as the garbage Frankenstein of a video game obsessed skateboarder, the sheer beauty lies in it’s ability to forgo any sort of attention to physical beauty.  The prototype’s ugliness belies the fact that is doing its job and collecting all the necessary sensory information to fine tune and prove that the idea is viable.  Sensors instead of wheels capture weight distribution information, buttons on key areas of the grip tape capture information relative to feet positioning for both tricks and just general riding.  The prototype isn’t complex.  It’s down and dirty, composed of elements that the developers had at their studio, not sent away for manufacturing at some third party.  This allows them to efficiently use their time and have more time to gather information and refine the product use before moving to more final prototype designs.  Whenever I see prototypes like this, I’m reminded of a design school example that was constantly brought up.  When designers went to improve the scalpel for surgeons, they didn’t use expensive prototypes, but rather a couple pencils with some elastics.  Using these low tech prototypes, they were able to mock up the best angle for the surgeon to handle precisely, and with longevity in mind.  The stripped down nature of the prototypes allows designers to quickly and easily get results, iterate the design based on the feedback, and quickly move the design forward.  None of those would be possible without the ‘ugly’, low tech approach to prototyping.