Making the whole process better for you, your clients, and your projects.

Aimee Melmoth-Bennett is a Producer at ��ݮ��Ƶ���� UK. In the past five years, she’s worked on a spectrum of projects from physical shoots to real-time VR. But no matter what, one thing remains the same — working closely with clients early on goes a long way to making the whole experience better. Here, she explains simple ways she integrates clients into the pre-production process and how you can too.

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It seems an obvious consideration at the start of a project, but taking the time to help your clients navigate the pre-production process early on can go a long way to helping them make the right decisions along the way — making the journey smoother, and the results better. Before I explain, let’s set the scene.

What’s pre-production?

Pre-production is the phase before moving into production and starting to actively make the final content in Engine. At this stage, we want to understand what we’re making, why we’re making it, and how we plan to make it.

You can see a high-level timeline of a complete project lifecycle below. But I’ll be focusing on the ‘Understanding’ section, where we work to understand our clients’ needs, helping them navigate the pre-production process and make the right decisions for the project.

A high-level timeline of a complete project lifecycle. Credit: ��ݮ��Ƶ����

The purpose of pre-production is to agree with the client and the team on what we’re going to make. We refer back to this through the ‘Build’ and ‘Deliver’ phases to keep us on track and true to our goals.

Now, how to get clients involved in this process early on. As you’ll see, it’s pretty simple stuff but it can make all the difference to everything from timings and budget, to final deliverables.

1. Understand your client and their audiences

Once contracts are signed and legalities are in place, it’s important to read the high-level deliverables in the contract to understand what success looks like for your client.

From there, you can delve deeper into these deliverables and work closely with your client to understand their key goals for the project.

At ��ݮ��Ƶ����, our Head of Design typically works closely with the client at this stage to understand the ‘why’, with the outcome of these conversations becoming a source of truth for all parties throughout the project. This information acts as a throughline from the client to the team on the ground, ensuring everyone is working toward a common goal. Some of the areas typically covered at this stage are as follows:

• Brief — a few sentences that define what we plan to deliver.

• Definition of success — a short sentence or statement that captures the essence of what a successful project looks like. For example, “The users have fun and keep returning to the game”.

• Understanding users — by collating data and asking questions, we get an understanding of who our users are and what makes them tick.

• Return value — the areas we have identified to focus on to entice our users to return.

• Competitive research — having researched and compared our competitors, we can identify what works well and the pain points we can solve.

Once we have identified the ‘why’ we then have solid foundations to define ‘what’ we are making and ultimately ‘how’ later in the pre-production process.

Credit: ��ݮ��Ƶ����

2. Make a plan and share it

Once we’ve defined the key ‘features’ of the project with our client, we can make a first pass plan or roadmap using a process called ‘story mapping’.

This process helps deepen your understanding and knowledge of the features and how they feed into the pillars, and generate epics, and tasks. It will ultimately give your team a more holistic view of the project so they can be more autonomous and make the right decisions toward the end goal.

For us, once we’ve planned and defined our goals as a team, we share them with our client as ‘experience milestones’. These describe what the user will feel, see, and interact with. It brings our shared vision to life in a more tangible way, rather than just listing features.

These experience milestones are then plotted out in a schedule, so the client knows what we plan to deliver and when.

I like to use  for our story mapping process.

3. Negotiate scope requests transparently

Once you start sharing prototypes and getting the client excited about the prospect of the project, you’re likely to get additional scope requests.

This is a good sign — the client is clearly invested in the idea and wants to make it the best it can be. But you’ll only have a certain amount of time and budget to play with. The question is: how can you keep your client happy and manage the scope at the same time?

At ��ݮ��Ƶ����, we think transparency is the best policy. After all, if our clients have an understanding of how many features we have, how long it’s going to take, and what our capacity is, they can better understand why we might agree to some requests and not others.

For instance, if we know our team’s velocity, we can communicate this information in a ‘stories delivered vs time’ chart which shows the number of features we have and how they fit into the project duration. It’s a clear way for the client to see our scope — and if there are any additions, how we might need to swap one thing out for another, or find more time and budget to accommodate them.

It’s also important to keep talking with your client to understand what scope requests matter most to them. It’s easy to say ‘yes’ to feature requests and add to the backlog, but if you don’t realistically have time or budget to facilitate the requests, it’s better to have this conversation upfront.

Being transparent with your client will mean you can prioritize and deliver on the highest value features requested — while managing expectations. You never know, you may end up ahead of schedule and can surprise your client with some bonus ones down the line.

4. Keep communicating openly

Another important part of the pre-production phase — and the project as a whole — is communication.

We have regular meetings with our client to discuss the previous week’s deliverables, receive feedback, flag when the next deliverable is, and what will be included.

It’s worth noting here the value of having a speedy feedback process in place, so everyone is looped in on updates and informed of any changes along the way. At the same time, it’s important to be clear about how many rounds of feedback are factored into the schedule (and budget), what they should provide feedback on, and when.

During pre-production, for instance, it’s vital that you sign off on prototypes, communicate the date you’d like to sign off, and be clear about what the client is signing off on. For instance, if the project is a whitebox, but you want to sign off on the functionality and feel.

Again, being transparent with your client matters.

Give your client a roadmap so they understand what they will get, and when. This will undoubtedly change and fluctuate during the project, but being transparent about these changes in the plan makes a difference.

Your client will be happier if you alert them to changes as early as possible, rather than keeping them in the dark. The more you do, the more trust you’ll build.

5. Prototype it so your client can try it

While it’s important to have a design on paper, the best way to get your client invested and providing feedback on your project early in the process is through prototyping.

This is all about giving your clients the chance to try a basic version of the experience on the target hardware, so they can see if it feels right. ‘Feel’ is key here, as we are talking about VR and AR — where the only way to truly experience their product is to try it.

Getting your client involved at this stage will provide you with early feedback on the user experience. Feedback on things you may not have otherwise thought about until much later down the line.

We often find that the earlier we can get the client involved at this level, the earlier they sign off. Which inevitably saves time and budget, and mitigates disappointment or misunderstanding later on.

Credit: ��ݮ��Ƶ����

Keep working together for better

It’s not only easy to get your clients involved in pre-production early but makes the whole process smoother and the project better. But if there was one thing I’d start doing straight away (if you’re not already doing it) is, to be transparent with your client from the outset.

You’ll find it fosters the sort of trust that builds lasting relationships and empowers you to help your client make the best decision at every stage. This means you can both create something to be proud of.