This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Nataly Stepanova
I always wanted to capture the real trade-offs we face at work. We talk a lot about product thinking, but most of the time engineers learn it the hard way, by breaking things in production or living with tech debt for months.
So I started a small project called InMind Lab. The idea is simple: put developers into interactive comic stories where they play as the main character and make choices. Do you skip tests to ship faster? Do you cut scope or take on tech debt? Each decision has an outcome that feels close to what happens in real projects.
The fun part is that it looks like a comic. The hard part is the pipeline behind it. I had to combine:
- a way to write scenarios with branching decisions,
- generation of panels with dialogues that are short and natural,
- keeping the whole story realistic for a developer (not a product manager),
- and making sure the language is clear and engaging.
It took many iterations. At first the dialogues sounded robotic. Sometimes the outcomes were too optimistic. Or the panels did not match the situation. Balancing realism and fun was harder than I thought.
Last week I finally managed to ship the first playable stories. It feels rough, but it already shows what is possible.
You can try it here: https://inmindlab.hyperskill.org/stories
🤪 Another thing I still need to work on is performance. Right now the stories take a while to load from the database, and it breaks the flow. This is high on my list to fix, because I want the experience to feel smooth and instant.
I would love feedback from fellow developers. Does it feel real? What trade-offs should I add next?
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Nataly Stepanova
Nataly Stepanova | Sciencx (2025-08-25T16:00:39+00:00) What happens if you turn real dev trade-offs into an interactive story?. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/08/25/what-happens-if-you-turn-real-dev-trade-offs-into-an-interactive-story/
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