This week began with a presentation to our faculty about the state of our project. Our main goals with the presentation were to convey the research journey we’ve been on so far, and to gain feedback on the viability of the direction our designs are heading in.
We received a wide range of feedback from the various faculty members from “this project has a lot of great thought put into it” to “this project is a slow moving wreck headed for disaster”. For the most part, the feedback broke down into the following general themes:
- Game Idea was Too High-Level
- Prototypes will help
- Playtesting will be hard
- We should push towards addressing current issues
As a result, we spent the remainder of the week reflecting and brainstorming on these ideas as a team.
- We needed to solidify our idea down to something very specific and meaningful. After discussion, we settled on the idea of addressing social media. There are real parallels between the emotions we want to target and some of the issues in that space.
To expose the feelings of isolation that can occur when seeking meaningful connections through social media.
- We should start pushing towards making “toy” versions of some of the types of interactions we could have. If we start building toys, we can shape them towards our transformational goals.
Next week, we’re going to push the research and discussion aside to start working on some simple prototypes.
