This week was the final week of the semester. It was filled with presentations and product demos from all the teams at ETC and taking care of any last minute iterations from clients. We presented on Tuesday, choosing Kirsten, Dave, and Tony to speak with Aly and Ashley providing technical and art support.

The faculty was genuinely impressed by our project. They loved how we designed our card deck and how we especially paid so much attention to the client’s wants and needs. They also appreciated how Aristeia talked about lessons learned on this type of project as well as suggestions for the next time such a task was to be performed. Looking at the feedback provided, it was clear that inviting faculty members to our workshop last week was a good idea as their observations helped reinforce our statements that our model and card deck is new, good, and useful; that it delivered on its promised goals. What they wished for us to talk about more was the future of this project (as we had shown that there is significant enough interest from outside sources) and branding.

We took their feedback in mind when presenting our cards on Friday’s final play through. The visiting faculty were more impressed when they actually were able to sit down and play with the cards, and helped us figure out how to handle IP and branding issues in the future. Additionally, Jane Werner, executive director for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, visited. She too seemed impressed with our cards and couldn’t wait for the final iteration of the cards to be delivered to the museum next Tuesday.

All of us are interested in carrying this forward though we still have an in depth group discussion and then talk more with the museum about what we can do together. It is clear once you get to know the origins of the project that the work delivered was the result of a partnership between the Aristeia team and the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.

Should we decide to continue this project, the team has already agreed that the next step would be to write an actual paper and try to get it published. The client and ourselves wish to keep our the card deck open sourced for as many people as possible to benefit from.  We do realize that different organizations may need different levels of support, and both the MAKESHOP and the team are willing to offer that.

It was a pleasure working together on this project. We had a very rewarding and fun experience, actually created something everyone is excited about (enough that it could continue forward), learned a lot of important lessons, and made lasting relationships. This is the end of the journey for our producer, Kirsten Rispin. She will be graduating later this month and will then start her exciting new job at Schell Games. The rest of us are all excited for her, sad to see her go, and are looking forward to the next half of our time through grad school. Wish us luck!