The Week in Review

In our second week, we moved from setting up and asking questions to “iterative ideation,” developing and refining potential ideas for a “story creator” for six to 10-year-olds in several rounds before presenting them to our clients, the San Antonio Children’s Museum and Argyle Designs, at the end of the week.

We started by brainstorming individually, each taking the clients’ broad goals (sense of wonder and accomplishment, and appreciation of stories) and constraints as jumping off points. We presented over 23 ideas to each other before narrowing these down to six to develop further in teams of two, which we again presented to each other and our adviser before narrowing our focus to three of our best ideas and a number of variations and “back pocket” concepts, which we would not include in the formal presentation but have on hand if needed.

Not yet knowing what kind of approach would be most successful, we thought it best to present our client with ideas that touched on different technologies, spaces, and storytelling structures, ranging from open-ended free play to a guided experience that more closely resembled a traditional storybook.

Our final presentation to the client at the end of the week was a success. Presenting disparate concepts created a shared language of tools, approaches, and goals that should help us speak the reach the next step in developing this product. The clients can now use, remix, and mash up what we presented to define a final deliverable.

As a side note, we ended last week with an illuminating trip to the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, where we observed exhibits like the one we will be building in action. Our biggest take-away: the need for intuitive design and indirect control.

We Suggest

• Regis Frey’s storytelling game Drunken Wizards
• Axe Cop, a comic originally written by a 5-year-old and illustrated by his 29 year old brother
• FaceAPI and Kinect SDK 1.6, off the shelf solutions for face mapping and Augmented Reality
• Using Spotify to build an inspiration playlist to get you in the mood of your project

The Week Ahead

• By Tuesday, our client has pledged to have a direction they would like us to move in.
• In the meantime, we’ll playtest prototypes of concepts and tools we presented.
• Throughout the week, we’ll be refining our branding and identity (website, poster, etc.).
• We’ll further implement Agile and SCRUM development techniques.
• By Friday, we will present a more fully developed idea to our client based on their feedback.