Vision Walls: An Analog tool for End-to-End Journeys

When I was at Electronic Arts Worldwide Studios, I was often brought in to put out fires, which essentially meant troubleshooting projects that had derailed or lost their focus. (Fun Fact: This was where my consultancy’s name Engine Co 4 came from.) Regardless of what the executive team told me the cause was, my first step was always simple: interview people across the floor and ask them simply, “In 3 sentences or less, what game are you making?” Then: how do you know that, and how do you know whether your work is on target for it? Equally, how do you track your user journeys at both the micro and macro levels?

Regardless of the studio or game, when a game was in trouble, one cause was universally consistent: the lack of a single shared vision of what they were building. In teams larger than five people, it would be exceptionally rare to find three people who shared the exact same vision for the product’s scope, mechanics, capabilities, and flow. Disconnects between where the art was going and where the gameplay systems were heading were rarely intentional but were the natural consequence of non-visible designs.

In the days of PC and console game development, such a vision would likely have been described ad nauseam in a Game Design Document (GDD) covering hundreds of pages. Similar to a PhD thesis, these documents were likely read by the author and maybe a handful of people, but never an entire team. Worse, when design changes did happen, they were contained in the lead designer’s brain or isolated Jira tickets. With few people seeing the changes documented, the broader impact on the game went unnoticed.

The Miro Trap: Why Infinite Digital Canvases Fail

"Why can’t we just do that in Miro or Mural?"

Digital whiteboards are excellent tools for virtual brainstorming for many teams, and I use them often for working with remote clients. However, for team members to regularly see end-to-end or complex design documents and quickly read changes or understand iterations, the virtual tool falls short.

These infinite digital canvases prioritize ease of modification (granted, they let you scroll back in time through versions like a code repository), which creates its own form of cognitive friction. This is in addition to revisions being obscured behind zoom levels, pans, layers, and browser tabs, and, most importantly, requiring a user to log in and check regularly. Unless an organization keeps an active projector running 24/7 on an open studio floor, digital boards are out of sight and out of mind. The virtual tool falls short nearly every time.

Unless an organization keeps an active projector running 24/7 on an open studio floor, digital boards are out of sight and out of mind

When I was hands-on leading design or art teams, our physical Vision Wall became the de facto reality check and would always become the beating heart of a design team. Because a physical wall cannot be minimized, closed, or scrolled away, it brings physical scale and gravitas with persistent visibility. Any executive, engineer, producer/program manager, investor, or new hire can walk into a room and rapidly digest the full scope, trajectory, and current maturity of an interactive ecosystem. It shifts project alignment from an act of faith into an observable, shared physical reality.

A Tool for any Interactive Project

When I made the transition from games and film back to designing apps and services, I found the same problems kept arising. Curiously, it was here that programmers found it even more useful than in games, as they were not as used to thinking about memory and architecture constraints. I have since used this same method on apps for mental health, physician practice management, medical AI tools, and even a tourism matchmaking app.

Pro tip: Instead of pretty concept renderings, replace those placeholders with your design kit, imagery, and audio languages and cues.

The Physical Canvas: Adapting from Feature Animation

Through my involvement with ACM SIGGRAPH and my role at EA, I had the good fortune of developing relationships with creative leaders at Disney Feature Animation and DreamWorks Animation. As we shared methods, I learned about the power of a color script, story graphs, storyboards, and animatics. Similarly, I came to appreciate more how animation studios quickly take those animatics and put them up on reels, as in film reels. Animatics are essentially a stop-frame animated version of a video or movie that uses storyboards, typically low fidelity and hand-drawn, where each storyboard is on screen for the approximate length of time the shot it represents would be on screen. They will typically include music and sound effects.

The essential notion is that if a film isn’t funny, or the story isn't good on the reels (starting with the animatic), adding more color, light, and animation isn’t likely to fix the core story problems, therefore do not pass go, do not start increasing the cost of production. Storyboards are quick and inexpensive to make, but if production starts before things are clear, it smells a lot like what tech people call “tech debt,” which is like quicksand. Once you are in, it gets harder and harder to escape, let alone do your best work. The more I saw game teams adrift, the more I thought games, and interaction design more broadly, needed a better way to do pre-production and keep the team aligned, the way reels were incredibly powerful at keeping animation teams of hundreds aligned and focused. And that brought me back to the step before animatics: those moving, portable 4’ x 8’ Homasote walls on wheels at Disney.

Their story teams mapped nearly their entire show across rolling pin-up boards, much like what Stanford’s d.school later popularized. Story rooms across film and television had long figured this out: pinning the entire narrative arc onto a wall so the whole team could see the story from start to finish. It struck me as bizarre that linear storytelling mediums relied on this physical wisdom, while interactive mediums, which are vastly more complex, did not.

Interactive products may not be linear, but they still have a beginning, an end, and a defined, prioritized user progression. Designers know the branches, rules, constraints, and decision trees, but those relationships are rarely surfaced so everyone can examine them at once.

To solve this, I developed the Vision Wall, a method of full-ecosystem Experience Mapping.

Find a place to stand shoulder to shoulder, looking at and discussing a wall rather than eye to eye. It's a subtle method for unifying the team around the work, not against each other.

The Core Philosophy: A Living Document, Not a Showroom

Before detailing how a wall is constructed, one foundational rule must be understood: Many teams want to make these walls pretty. Those walls have the least value. A Vision Wall, whether stationary or moving, is not marketing collateral for a studio lobby. It is a living, working physical document that layers up to communicate the current status of the creative vision, continuity, and scope to an entire team.

The wall starts with Post-it notes describing the beat, event, or mechanic that is placed in the timeline. Images or swipes¹ from a swipe file², reference art, and screen grabs on top of the Post-it notes. Then loose concept sketches or storyboards, followed by low-res art. As designs change, the new one goes on top of the old one. Ideally, note or mark up the old one so people can quickly understand why a concept was iterated on or discarded.

Iteration is key

The best work requires multiple iterations to visualize, prototype, and explore design ideas. This can and should happen much more frequently and quickly at the start of pre-production

• Start with blanks: Never wait for final art. Tack up blank sheets of paper or rough index cards as placeholders for levels, systems, or narrative beats.

• Rough progression: Replace rough sketches with gray-box geometry, then wireframes, then concept art, and finally in-engine screenshots as production matures.

• A meeting forum: It exists as a physical meeting ground to debate the game, spot gaps, and identify structural issues before code is committed. If leadership consensus is ambiguous, the wall serves as objective leverage to force alignment.

Visual Architecture of the Wall

A Vision Wall takes the largest continuous wall in a studio and establishes a spatial layout for the entire interactive experience. Based on production architectures developed across console and digital ecosystems, the wall is organized into distinct horizontal bands and vertical milestones.

You might wonder why time is represented on a linear timeline, especially when interactive apps and games' primary goal is to give users agency. When we consider user journeys, from discovery (the first moment someone hears about the project), to download/install it (their first interaction with the product, that is typically escapes design attention), and how they progress thereafter through Nue User Experience ("NUE" and ramp to the goal of conversion, these stages must be thoughtfully designed to prevent users from failing while building confidence in the first week.

Therefore, it's critical to leverage all your design elements, such as incentives, narrative, and audio and visual media, to hook your user. Every tool at your disposal should help guide, influence, and support players along the way. While some pathways may branch out and become more complex, we want to visualize for the entire team how we want to bring players in, build their confidence, and encourage them to continue their journey.

1. The Belt/Center Line: Key Timing and Rhythm Line.

   Running horizontally across the center of the wall from left to right is the complete user journey, spanning chronological product time from Day 0 to Alpha, Beta, and +30/60/90 days live. (Bonus points if you include the design of your discovery funnel to the NUE)

   • Modular Nodes: Single-player levels (SP-Level 1..,n) and multiplayer maps (MP-Level 1…n) are laid out side-by-side.

   • Consistent Node Data: Every level slot features standard cards displaying:

     • Key Level Objective

     • Key Visual Narrative Points

     • Level Isometric Map/View

     • Key Landmarks, Weapons, and Material callouts

2. Additional Area: World View, Creative Brief and Key Dates

For games, more ‘robust’ apps, or apps that deal with the physical world, more pictures or illustrations are essential. An overview of the world you are building, whether literal or figurative, is indispensable. If it’s a game, the characters, weapons, and key environments all need their place so you can ensure you have the right contrast. If it’s an app, the digital environment, with its clear fences, areas, and boundaries, is essential to keep everyone honest. As I have started using this method for mental health apps, reminding our team where the users are at different times in their day is equally helpful.

• Production Lock Dates: The absolute top edge displays hard dates for Design Lock, Art Lock, Code Lock, Alpha and Beta (which might overlap).

• The X-Statement & Emotional Brief: Directly below the locks sits the product's "X-Statement" (the core hook and primary mechanic) paired with the Creative Brief’s three emotional bullets. Every asset pinned below must defend itself against these foundational pillars.

3. The Lower Zone: Look, Feel, Visual (and Audio) narrative: World, Factions, and Tone.

   Directly below the progression sits the emotional and aesthetic anchor:

   • High-level concept pieces ("Beauty Art Paintings").

   • Character silhouette lineups, faction art (e.g., Protagonist vs. Antagonist, the 5 Clans), and character turnaround models.

   • Key lighting, materials, weapons, and FX art style guides.

4. The Upper Zone: Player Journey maps (Gameplay, Behavior, and Lifecycle)

   Above the belt line, and vertically aligned with their respective levels, game mechanics, triggers, etc. This is the most critical section, as it lets the team visualize end-to-end player progression by player type, including overlaps. It also allows teams to avoid a very typical pothole by taking the time to visualize how the game economy scales, etc. (For the more intellectually inclined teams, they may want to track the user's psychological and behavioral journey, especially what is asked of the player, what encouragement/motivations are offered, and what penalties are implied.

   • Mapping the Player Segments: Bartle's player types, Amy Jo Kim’s and Andrzej Marczewski’s HEXAD methods for approaching player segmentation are very good places to start. Once you resolve your player segmentation, you need to ensure you have good and appropriate journeys for all of the player types you can foresee through playtesting and user research.

   • Lifecycle Funnels: Mapping how the experience moves a player across the engagement lifecycle: Attract/Discover $\rightarrow$ Install $\rightarrow$ Ramp $\rightarrow$ Retain $\rightarrow$ Convert. You might notice in the illustration above that the sections have holding boxes in faint orange, yellow, green, yellow, and green to separate the first core player acquisition phases. Beat Boards & Overlays: Graphic curves indicating adrenaline, pacing peaks, cognitive load, and currency distribution. We frequently use tracing paper or clear vellum draped over the belt line to audit currencies, ad placements, and reward drops without cluttering the primary asset layer.

Ground Rules for Success

A wall's value to the team depends on the recency and accuracy of its content, meaning what is actually approved rather than pending. To ensure that, I rely on these core principles;

1. Centrality: Make this area the location where the team discusses game design changes, economy, ramping, New User Experience (NUE), art direction, sound direction, continuity, end-to-end scope, player journeys. Revisions and approvals must be timely, and very quickly obvious to someone walking by

2. Setting up and maintaining the Vision Wall should not be an afterthought to get real benefit from it. It's best rooted in your pre-production and becomes part of your team's daily and weekly design and art review rhythms, and where signoffs happen, until the game or app is fully built out. Printing deliverables and doing physical signoffs will likely feel old-fashioned; the process creates a discipline that helps the team stay aligned throughout production.

1. Layer Up: Rarely are things ever taken down and discarded, and if so, only by a Wallkeeper. When a feature, level layout, or concept art evolves, the new sheet is pinned or taped directly over the old version (more on this below).

1. Wallkeepers: While anyone can post, only the Art Director and Game Director can approve, change, annotate or remove elements, while the Keeper of the Wall maintains it. Typically, the “Keeper” is a producer or production manager. [To help with that, appoint a sharp, detail-oriented junior-mid level producer: the “Keeper of the Wall”].

2. Physical Signoffs: Each revision is stamped or tagged with a sticker bearing the approver’s initials and the date, functioning exactly like an engineering revision block.

3. Over time, the physical variations on the wall become a visual diagnostic tool:

   • Thick Sections: High-iteration zones where features have been repeatedly redesigned or debated. If someone says, "Let's try this instead," the team can simply flip through the physical layers on the wall to see if that approach was already attempted, understand why it was rejected, and save weeks of redundant development.

   • Thin Sections: Areas where the paper remains thin. These serve as an immediate red flag for directors: Is this section thin because the design was solved cleanly on the first pass, or because it has been neglected?

Using it in Practice/Preventing Design Creep: 3-Questions

The Vision Wall functions as an instant operational check against scope creep. Whenever a designer, engineer, or executive pitches a new feature, the conversation is conducted standing at the wall:

1. Show us where the user enters this feature.

2. Show us where and how they transition in and out

3. Show us how frequently the user touches this (feature/tool/region/etc.) across the entire belt line

If the person pitching can’t point to the explicit entry, exit, and lifecycle frequency on the wall, the feature is almost certainly unnecessary weight. Equally, the wall is useful for working out transitions in and out of each level, state, new feature, etc.

Beyond the Screen: Transmedia & Omnichannel Mapping

In larger IPs, the belt line extends beyond the console or PC experience into full Experience Mapping. Rather than treating external platforms (mobile companion apps, web portals, social community drops, licensed merchandise) as fragmented marketing afterthoughts, they are pinned directly to the time axis:

• The initial press teaser or narrative "leak".

• The web/mobile mini game that introduces a secondary antagonist.

• The console game day-and-date release.

• Companion apps that allow users to generate content or scan RFID-enabled merchandise at live events.

When mapped along a single physical plane, marketing, design, and live-ops align around a single cohesive rhythm rather than disjointed, platform-specific sprints.

Making Your Own Rolling Walls

The Disney versions were known as rolling storyboards or sequence carts. The version Stanford d. School created is a z-rack and they published a guide for building your own here. The version we built before the dSchool was in existence was rather simple, using ½” steel pipes with pipe brackets on the top and sides that held a 4’ x 8’ sheet of Celotex or Homasote wallboard, wrapped in inexpensive linen. This was then bolted on to a 2”x6” plank with 4 casters. We later moved the casters to a set of perpendicular outriggers to increase stability.

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1. Swipe: is a single ‘borrowed’ image that is used for reference for pre-visualization, reference art, etc.

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2. Swipe file: an organized, tagged stash of images pulled from anywhere: magazines, books, your own photography, the internet.

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