Bringing user studies in form of a game

Wohoooo! First exam successfully finished, a lot of preparation, hours of user study evangelism and a lot of insights into importance of user studies into design and innovation. I understand more and more that role of designer is becoming more than just creating a beautiful wrap. It is also something about discovering a user need, smartly involving them in creation process and giving a soul to the concept that could be fulfilled.

I would like to share my ideas of how I imagine user studies brought into the team that is not familiar with such. Most of the insights came from our Participatory innovation project with Dimaps, but is not limited to it.

I have used this synopsis in exam presentation, and of course – this is not a complete scientific paper, just a guide for myself. The basic idea is to make studying users as a game (3rd poster) and building knowledge about them from the methods applied that would be made in attractive form.

In quick glance – it is important to challenge teams’ assumptions about users that at least I have met quite often. In my opinion these assumptions lower the motivation of conducting user studies. Of course, there always can be good guesses, but studying users I think is actually a safer way of making innovation that would be accepted on the market.

More about challenging these assumptions in a synopsis. That’s at least from my own experience

It’s time to write about our last study project together with Innovation&Business students.  Writing is such a good way how to save an experience for a reference with a high level of details The course we are taking now is called Participatory innovation - one of major user-driven innovation approaches. And this project was a complementary part to lectures and discussions. We had to 1) find a real company, 2) get an innovation project and 3) fulfill it with methods that we were taught of. Project was meant to be 8 weeks long.

To sum up we worked together with company Dimaps on their route planning software. We made reasonable ideas and scenarios which were based on our user studies. However, there were some problems with inner motivation, communication (different mind-sets) and in our case – presentation of results. There is one of the scenarios above that we have extracted from user studies and co-ideation events.

In this project I have learned:

1. There is  need for one leader in a team, who helps to make teams’ decisions in a way that everyone is satisfied. That person needs to be charismatic, knowledgeable, a fast-thinker (to evaluate everyones’ ideas) and has to have a big picture in a head. Such person must not lose composure. By having many people who are willing to be only the one leader, makes decision making hard. Having bad or no leader in team, results in low motivation and incoherent group-work,
2. Team of 7 was too big in our case, just 4 people were working,
3. Presentation is how others perceive your work, good presentation means for most that group had a good work together (and it is mostly true),
4. It is important to be quick in capturing and interpretating data. Aim could be having 1-2 user-study videos per day, that would help to better and faster co-ideate in a group leading to richer ideas,
5. There is little value in having a shallow look at user-study materials (videos) and interpreting them 1:1. Question why they are doing that is important in order to create good user-centered products and services.
6. I have got a good insight in participatory innovation,
7. Consensus based group-work is slower, especially if members have different mind-sets, that requires to discuss each decision.

I am going into more details below.

Looking for a company

We started by dividing in teams (or groups would be more precise title) of 6-7 that took a lot of discussions. In the end our group consisted of 1 design student (me) and 6 business students.

Then we had a group meeting discussing what expectations/skills we have and what companies we will look for. It ended in a list of 10 companies what we contacted through email. I had to argue that only an email is not effective way of establishing connections that I experienced while working at WSI (only about 3% respond rate).  So we decided to call our contacted companies after couple of days will be passed since sending emails. Well, from 10 companies indeed 2 responded (rejected), that makes 2% respond rate But calling helped to established a contact, as managers seems to be so busy that they delete such emails or in best case – goes through very briefly and then forgets about them.

In the beginning we thought it shouldn’t be difficult to find companies because of many reasons including a cheap labor doing a project in favor of company for free Another reason that we imagined was possible connection with a university, that is a good source of constant innovation. However, in reality not many companies wanted to work with students as such a project in their opinion was for too short time or they didn’t though that such project would give them sufficient benefit. Looking for companies took more time than we expected so a project suddenly shrinked from 8 week project to 4 week long.

I guess our biggest mistake was waiting on one contact until they would give an answer, we should have had at least 1-2 meetings each day in order to find someone who would be more open and interested in such innovation project.

Starting the project

Dimaps GIS route planning (dimaps.com)

We were lucky, because one of the other groups did a better job in finding companies. They have got 5 options that have agreed on project, and they were happy to share with us. I must admit that they have sent e-mails to more than 60 companies. This company we were lucky with was Dimaps, quite small but very flexible software engineering company with concentration on route planning software and geographic information systems.

They were quite open, interested in new ideas how their route planning system could be improved – how users could interact with a map, how people could report if routes were incomplete (hey dude, I have found a better route!) etc.

Soon we have conducted a first group meeting. We decided on a next plan – in having user studies to understand the use of route planning software in practice. We have got some serious disagreements as well – do we have to spend a lot of time in order to understand an existing Dimaps software or concentrate on user studies and their needs. That was a point where I missed another design student who understands a need of studying users. However, both points about software and users were right. We needed to understand sofware that we are making suggestions for and we need to understand users in order to suggest user-centered ideas. However, communication often was not fruitful.

Thing that we missed from a beginning was one strong project leader, because at least three of us wanted to lead and had strong arguments. That made it difficult to achieving consensus and making strong decisions which should have leaded towards specified tasks for each team member and coherent team-work.  How do you pick up only project leader? Everyone has ideas, but who should be the one, who makes decisions while having everybody satisfied?

Conducting user studies

Parcel delivery experiment

In the beginning we decided to conduct a delivery experiment. One of our group mates, Eleonora, had to deliver a parcel to a flat in student dorms. The reason for choosing this building was because it is challenging (many entrances, most of them closed) and that our group mate hasn’t been there before. We followed Eleonora with video cameras capturing real-life experience (being confused, calling, asking, looking). That helped us to get our minds into the project and put ourselves in the shoes of users.

After capturing this video, we made another one. This time our group mate Margus was a main actor, having a route calculated by Dimaps software. This case was straightforward as software showed right entrance and route to the right room. We found out that Dimaps route planning software really helped. However, we have also found out that there are some potential problems – how someone who has a delivery room on a map knows in which floor this room is?

Next there was a delicious idea – to order a pizza and follow their delivery in order to see how local pizza delivery businesses work. The only one local pizza place used to advanced methods of planning a route. Basically they just 1) got an order,  2) made a pizza, 3) delivered by memory (or paper map).

We also conducted interviews with ambulance and truck driver about their route planning systems. Both of them use GPS devices (in ambulance case updated every 2-3 days).

Discussion / tangible stuff

User workshop

We conducted a workshop having a manager of Dimaps (who is also an expert in software engineering), manager of customer department in large media company and three of our group-mates on board. Using tangible, abstract elements and mock-up of building where delivery experiment was done, we provoked discussions about real-life delivery problems, possible solutions and a future of route planning systems. We have got many ideas there.

Challenge in such workshops is to give a specific, reasonable task for participants to solve. Tangible parts is a good way in helping participants to build  solutions. However, as I experienced facilating workshop, there should be a clear introduction of task and parts that should be used. Besides, such seemingly tiny thing as easiness to reach tangible parts, also affects very much participant willingness to

Scenarios

Using knowledge that we had from user studies and a workshop, we generated different ideas of how and where Dimaps route planning software could be used which includes 1) mobile phones, 2) smartphones, 3) special our-made device Obox. We saw these three as cost-effective and mobile environments of having route planning software in. Besides such devices could support feedback from users in order to improve routes. We also saw an opportunity for Dimaps for selling their information for GPS software developers.

Report & presentation

Mock up of Obox & Kweedo

In the end we made a report and presentation. All groups including us got some critics from teachers about a report. Main points are that it should be a joy to be read which includes having graphics not only text. And graphics should be in one common style.

Also presentation of findings is very important. That includes basic things 1) are materials (posters, slides) readable by everyone? 2) is presentation coherent? 3) Does somebody get something out of presentation (information, fun) 4) Does presentation fits in the time allowed?. Some of the teams did a great job in having enjoyable presentation by making it in a form of little theater/storytelling. That makes it easier to be perceived.

All the teams had interesting prototypes, just have a look in my Flickr account or at our courses’ common one.

Usability issues of photo camera in Sony Ericsson K750i

From the moment when I started taking HCI course (2 lectures already), I really feel that I have broadened my understaning of various computer sytems. Coming from Computer Science background (strictly from Web development field), everything around HCI was associated to me with PCs and usability of websites. Now I have seen that apart from that, there exists various original computer systems used in manufactory.  There are washing machines that we are using often with their own user interfaces. Not mentioning mobile phones (oh hell, how many pain I have experienced with mine), photo cameras and other often used products.

Well, the thing that also surprised me was the mathematics (actually a lot) in HCI field, especially for predictive models. While the math formulas seems quite scary, actually they can bring a benefit by predicting the user behaviour without making time consuming experiments. That includes famous Fitts’s law (practical illustration there), Hick’s law and Keystroke level model.

Then there are those descriptive models, meant to provide context and vocabulary for thinking about a problem. For instance thinking about what  people are doing with each of their hands while using a computer system (is the interaction comfortable both for left and right handies?). Other popular theories include Key-action model (operation of keys on keyboard), Three-State Model of Graphical lnput (relationship between pointing devices and the interaction techniques they offer) and Model for Mapping Degrees of Freedom to Dimensions.

Our task was also to find a bug from our daily life. As I mentioned later, I had some pain with my mobile phone, so this was a perfect moment for letting it out

When we analysed HCI issues, we divided them in 4 categories by their relation – performance, mental models, affordances (action possibilities an artifact offers to a user) and organisational problems. Like in my case it is possible to state technical problem as a HCI problem. For instance the speed issue is more engineering problem.

By the way, if you are a salsa lover, you definetly should visit Riga. And check out both Riga salsa festival and Latvia salsa festival which will take a part there in summer.

So, about the last project. It began on December before going home where we had to create an interactive lamp. This was heavy but interesting project just for a week.

Planning an interactive lamp

Before sketching and presenting our ideas of the lamp, we concentrated on  4 things:

Sketch interactive lamp

• light – you can do amazing things with this beautiful phenomenon of the world,
• interaction – it needed to be simple, but innovative, and fitting in overall theme of the lamp,
• materials – should be high quality, also fitting with a theme of the lamp,
• symbolism – represent the light, communicate theme.

Then we continued with sketching our (crazy) ideas and presenting 3 selected to our peers. As I haven’t done a sketching much before, I was surprised how creativity starts to flow after diving into sketching. I ensured again that our minds (individually and collectively) are such a great source of ideas if opened by right techniques.

So basically my idea was to create a lamp where you put a finger inside and blinks accordingly to your heartbeats.

Planning a form & interaction

Ideas on a form of interactive lamp

After talking with people (our supervisor and course mates) we decided that this idea would be interesting to make. As this was a first I am creating any electronics (I have been only breaking it when I was a child), I also contacted our electronics teacher as early as possible. After his accept of possibility to create electronics for this in a week, I continued further.

Now as idea was clear it needed to decide on form which would support a topic of heartbeats/life. There were a couple of candidates – an egg, a stream, century plant, an oak leaf and a circle. I selected an egg, as I thought it would be more interesting that something would happen inside. Besides, it supports an idea of life pretty well (a birth).

Next part was to plan how somebody will interact with this lamp. It was clear from beginning that a finger will be put in. But what should happen? Will the color of light change? So in my case I chose the easiest way – just to blink a light according to heartbeats.

Creating a form & assembling electronics

Form of an interactive lamp

When the idea of what should be created was clear, I decided to start making a form. I thought it would be more appropirate to make the container (egg) from a foam. So I cut two halfs of an egg with an empty middle (for electronics and LEDs).

It was quite a challenge to cut a precise egg form in 3D environment, on a paper it looks easy, but not in real world … Significant part of cutting was based on intuition.

A grey tube on the top of egg is meant to be a place where a finger should be put in. Basically a technique was to let the light (LED) shine through a finger while on the other end receiving changes of the light (transparency of finger) by a light depended resistor.

A challenge here was to to keep as short distance between light emittor and receiver as possible. An additional thing was that if distance would be wrong, there wouldn’t be time for me to change this (so probably I needed more planning there).

The intellectual part of electronics was planned to make using an Arduino prototyping platform. Special thanks for Meng Li who has made her (similar) project accessible to the public.

After the form of a foam was ready, I needed to make the pieces of glass for holes (to see the light inside), put LEDs inside and a photoresistor. Then I glued both parts together and put another clay layer outside, so it would be an egg solid. Then I needed just to paint it black and add the electronic circuit (thanks to our electronics teacher). The electronic circuit was working, but I was concerned if the distance between light emitter and receiver will be enough. Unfortunately it was not, so I was sad a little bit and ashamed because I had also to present it at exhibition.

Are you alive?

However, the best thing we can do is to try better next time and not become too upset, because that becomes a paralysis – a waste of our hours of life that we can’t get back

Presenting at exhibition

At the end we had to present our work at exhibition, where students from electronics and interaction design also took a part. I was impressed what is possible to make by electronics and I never thought that I will do something like that will electronics. That was inspiring.

You can check some of other reeeeally interesting lamps and other interactive developments in my Flickr account.

Sounds scientifically, isn’t it? It was my topic for the portfolio exam, my viewpoint of how I understood our work so far in the semester. Basically it is about how i saw people sharing their tacit (non-articulated) knowledge when we involved them by different design objects (game, video, business model, mock-up & scenario). We had to show what we have learned through all projects, explain from our own viewpoint (teamwork, provoking, leadership etc.) and ideally – let the examinors experience our learning process by themselves (by making them to do something), and this is not easy actually.

As I have done research on knowledge concept before (while studying computer science), this theme came naturally. I am still interested in how people perceive information and how they gain knowledge.

Tacit Knowledge Acquisition Through Provocation by Design Objects

To be honest, it was a little bit unusual portfolio presentation. I am in doubt if employers would be interested much in scientifical topics or what we have learned. However, this is university and this is great opportunity for us to experiment, to learn, to broaden our horizon.

Well, I got 10 (by Danish system) which is equal to B by ECTS grading scale (hell, why European countries can’t have united grading system in practice?). I suppose I was lacking more impressive involvement of examinors. But I have a feeling of good job done and I appreciate more feedback. That’s the thing I really like, after each grade we have well-considered and useful feedback. That enabled us to improve next time.

Well, of course, there is a lot more of experience and topics I gained through our work including better understanding of teamwork, not to mention our sketching, woodwork, foam, writing classes. Well the teamwork is one big topic I want to talk about seperately. It is bloody hard sometimes to work in a team, make concensus. You better have to learn to present and argument your ideas very well, as there are often a resistance against it. However, I feel that I am improving in team work project-by-project. Most impressive things on this world are made in teams, it is a great power that needs to be practiced. Knowledge from books about teamwork topic equals almost to zero when not tried in practice.

Proposal of design for a social lamp

The last teamwork project this semester was a critical design. Our task was to create a design proposal for a critical artifact which enquires people about their experience of indoor climate environments. We were working in teams of three people.

As indoor climate has various aspects, we had a discussion about it using a-frame cards for inspiration. On one side there was picture and sentence describing a situation (from field studies). Inside there was broader explanation of situation including an involved person. On back there were our notes, that we would like to discuss.

Project was divided in three phases (three weeks total).

1. Getting inspiration – field studies

In the beginning and later in project we felt like we don’t know what we are going to built. It was like fumbling in the dark, experimenting and going forward step by step. I learned that is important to plan an meeting, so you both could feel more comfortable. Besides what we missed is explaining to people we meet, what we are going to do and that we are more interested of observing them when doing something, not only having an interview. However, in this moment we didn’t know quite clearly what we are going to do, though. Critical design was something new for us

Kitchen of university’s canteen

We grabbed a video camera and went downstairs to a kitchen of canteen. We didn’t warn them that we will arrive, however we were lucky enough to have an opportunity to observe how they are working in their most busy time of day. To be honest, we were allowed to do that only with a second time, so field studies in this case were a balance between politeness and perseverance. But they were really friendly and told a little bit what kind of food they are making.

Even though we didn’t have much talking with people in kitchen we gained good impression of the indoor climate there. It was a narrow space, hot with high humidity. It seemed like they didn’t have a time for making all the environment cosy, because there were improvised bookshelf, which didn’t support find a book coveniently. They used quite many workarounds in environment (spoon to keep doors opened).

Following a student in canteen

Getting inspiration from environment

Then we followed a student from the moment of picking up food to choosing a table to sit. After that we had short interview of how he feels like in canteen and what would it like to change.

He said that uncontrolled noise of the people sometimes is disturbing and music, green plants there and beautiful view outside seen through windows is something that keeps the atmosphere relaxed.

As it appeared later, we were mostly inspired by this case as we built a lamp that reflects an atmosphere around table.

Visiting local art school

We made an appointment before about visiting it and observing environment. They were nice people and made a trip through all the building telling about their environment.

We found out that interiour of the rooms really affects popularity of it. Too many colors (paintings) on the walls could make someone anxious, but much of white color can make a nice balance between relaxing and exciting environment. There were many interestingly styled rooms used for exhibitions. But after each exhibition they paint it back to white having a fresh start for the next one.

Literature and examples of critical design

For better understanding of critical design we had an assignment for reading a one scientific paper each about particular experiment. Then we made posters and presented to each other. For me personally that have a lot of understanding by examples.

Social Bubbles - critical design artifact

2. Provoking discussions – critical artefact

In the beginning of a week we had a guest lecturer for a workshop on critical artifact methodology. He showed examples of his own experience and directed us on making our artifacts in groups. The most important in this case was to find assumptions (related to findings from field studies) and thinking of the ways how can we challange these.

From discussions an idea about social climate in socially rich environment (canteen) appeared. We wanted to question value of private space and indicating a state of private space to other people. Two of our three teams as appeared later had works related to social climate, which shows that concept of indoor climate could be broad as well.

After that we built a mock-up of canteen and the bubbles around each table. We imagined that these bubbles could isolate people from outside, and people could decorate their private bubbles as they wish (music, light, color, transparency) in that way either inviting people to join in their private space or not.

This mock-up later supported us to explain our idea, and to help other people feel themselves in this situation in that way provoking them to think what would they do in this situation.

Social Lamp - critical design proposal

3. Design proposal

After presenting our mock-up and idea, we got a lot of feedback to transform it to a design proposal. People liked an idea about indicating their mood and overall social atmosphere around their private space. They also wanted something more realistic, because bubbles seems like too much into a future.

In the beginning we made a little human-like toy which reflects social climate around a table with its facial expressions. But then with a help of tutors we gave up the idea of human like creatures and started thinking of something more abstract. Because human-like creatures make people expect human-like behaviour. Besides emotions are very complex and facial expressions would limit indication.

Idea of social lamp

Then we came up with an idea of a lamp which reflects social climate with a light (intensity, color, brightness) reacting on voice and touch. This would give more richeness for expressing the mood and the abstract form could make it more interesting giving the people enough interest to play with it.

It is meant to provoke discussions about social climate indoors. Let people talk, imagine, argue … share their ideas and opinions.

Reacting on touch

The brightness of a light would change depended on voice, that would grab attention of people, making them touch it. When touched, a water ripples could appear right from fingertips.

When ovals being moved, a color of lamp would change in that way allowing people to choose a color that best describes social climate into their private space.

Reflections of project

After a project I had some reflections that could be better. I learned a lot, to be patient in team-work, to be more critical sometimes. I learned to work with a wood while making this provotype. I learned that I should practice more when presenting, and to get idea through, I should have a stronger opinion.

List of important points I would improve next time:

• It is easy in falling in trap of adjusting the idea to the design rather than extracting design from the idea.
• In teamwork sometimes it is hard to get concensus, takes a lot of the time for getting common view.
• Critical design requires a change of mindset – instead of thinking about usable, ready, intuitive product we should think about product that is open to interpretation, provokes discussions and is not very useful always.
• When there lack of ideas in the team (no ideas, no discussions) it is useful to invite somebody from outside to listen to us, make an opinion and suggestions.
• Tangible mock-ups help to discuss and generate new ideas. It helps to present idea as well, so that everybody understands it.
• Next time there is need to find consensus faster so time for user testing is more.
• Presentation should be practiced before, ideally if one person presents the idea and other persons make additions and helps to answer questions.

If you want to see more pictures of a project, check out my personal Flickr account or our common account.

Testing Business Models and our findings

In this course we wanted to discover how can one integrate business thinking in a user-driven innovation process?

We were introduced with local company, who has made innovative daylight solution.  We ITPD students were merged with students from Innovation & Business studies. Our main task was to determine the market (Schools, Hotels, Hospitals etc.) where company should expect the largest ROI.

Project was organized in matrix type, so each of us were in both functional and project teams. I was in User Research and in the same time OEM teams. In UR team I was able to discuss and share methods for researching users. In OEM team I was able to discuss which companies to visit, what kind of information to get, which was expected to result in tangible business model which should provoke discussions between all stakeholders.

User Research Methods

In the beginning of the project the excitement was so high that I was willing to test all (known to me) UR methods.

Research tools [Elements of UX, p.51]:

• surveys
• interviews
• focus groups
• user tests
• field studies

Video tools

• usability testing
• scenario design
• ethnographic field studies

However, due to a lack of time and short meeting sessions between team members (we and I&B students had different time schedules) we spent most of the energy getting to consensus and deciding how a work should be done. This resulted in some overlays of our work. That should be kept in mind for the next projects, that clear, agreed roles and a strategy in the beginning is important

Tangible Business Model

And one more thing that I would do next time after we have consensus – making more research on company’s solution, so there would not be a need to ask simple questions for company about them in the middle of project.

So in the end we ended up with some interviews, daylight solution research and business model testing in the end. Some teams used Personas and Scenarious to present their ideas and users.

Our business model had a matrix structure as well and it showed how effective going into a specific market (Architects, Offices, Wellness centers etc.) would be if parameters of Customization, Visual Perception, Cost etc. would be changed.

You can get insight of our project in my Flickr “Business of Design” set. Or our course’s Flickr set.

Until so far I knew only the “paper” version of specifications document and didn’t think that video could be successfully used in that step as well.

We were divided in 4 teams by two members. Got a plenty of poor video materials from Congo. Then we had lectures on requirements, specifications, innovations. And also had a great lectures on how to make a successful video and use it in a design process (usability testing, scenario design, ethnographic field studies).

Some of the points that are important in the filming process:

• Don’t hurry – film a frame for a while, fix it, don’t change too fast to the next point of attention.
• Think not only about object’s present position, but also it’s possible position. This is useful when filming a person, so it (or part) doesn’t go outside the visible frame.
• Think about eyes of the movie viewer when editing. Make sure that, when next frame starts, attention stays in the same position as in previous frame, or is lead smoothly.

Different viewpoints

We made 4 categories that could inspire the building of power generator. These categories included people, activity, transport and environment. One team picked up one category and then we sorted video scenes into these categories. There were hundreds of GB, so a lot of work!

Tips for cutting

• Keep in mind who is a receiver of your video?
• Think about the place of the central action in current and next video scene. When the next scene starts, central action should start in the same place where it ended in previous scene. Lead the eye of the person watching video smoothly.

Video card game

After that we played a video card game for making the stories. For making video cards, we trimmed our video scenes to 2min max, extracted a screenshot and made a description. This made much easier to refer to video scene. Then we mixed all video cards we have made and tried to make a story of the cards we have. If we found that some of the cards don’t belong to our story, we tried to exchange those. We discussed much why our story is important, how it goes into our 4 categories, why the video cards we want to exchange are relevant for the other person?

After that, we had 8 interesting and relevant stories with a titles and a logical sequence of video scenes (cards).

Making a documentary video – ethnography field studies

After we had stories from video card game, there was a need for bringing these stories for a life. We trimmed our videos, add effects, showed to other, got feedback, made improvements. And in the end we each had a meaningful 2 minutes long video. All the videos were burned into the DVDs. Posters were made as well and we had a common design to make everything look professionally.

Using video for inspiration and requirement specifications

In the end of our project engineers making power generator were invited to a workshop. Their task was to discuss and build a power supply based on the information they have. We prepared the tinkering stuff, paper and toys for them to build a tiny power generator. They watched the first video and started to discuss and build. Then after some 10 minutes we showed other video, which brought even more inspiration and in the same time – constraints. We continued until all 8 videos were shown and in the end they came up with different concepts of that power generator to present.

That’s how video could be used for starting up project and opening the mind for new solutions. Video is a powerful tool for provoking ideas.

Were were four people in team, and I was the only one European (we actually did this project in Umeo university as the guests). I worked with three talanted girls from Canada, Brazil and China.

So here is the basic indegrents that experienced during our project.

1. Choosing a dilemma as an inspiration,
2. Setting a team,
3. Brainstorming on the idea of the game,
4. Developing a concept
5. Testing on users
6. Reiterating to 4th point and making improvements
7. Finishing product by making user instructions

1. Choosing a dilemma as an inspiration

We made interviews with local companies, searching for dilemmas they have to deal with in everyday life. In our case we chose the multitasking dilemma, where employees have to deal with tasks they were not hired for. How to deal with own tasks while in the same time helping a team?

A game should be interesting enough to engage players for a longer time, it should provoke people for discussions as well.

2. Setting a team

We set a team based on the similarity of our dilemma (we had three seperate dilemmas for all members). However, this reason for setting up a team is not enough. As it turned out (not only in this project), it is much easier to work if all team members know each other’s background, skills and wishes. Based on that it is possible to divide the roles and not overlay work of other members thus saving the time.

Forgetting the roles is useful in brainstorm session, defining strategy of the project but it is not effecient way of actually developing something.

And it is always much better to see not only team’s success but also your own (speaking about roles).

For us, it helped a lot, that we all were willing to work and interested to make that game as interesting as possible.

3. Brainstorming on the idea of the game

We started working by choosing a (multitasking) dilemma and brainstorming on that together. We came up with different concepts and discussed if it would be engaging, intellectual enough and relevant to our dilemma. Of course, we also needed to keep in mind that we had only two weeks for making that game with requests of making two prototypes from user testing sessions.

We managed to get along only with writings / drawings on the paper and talking. But in brainstorming a post-it sheets and even an acting could be efficient as well.

4. Developing a concept

In the same day when brainstorming was held, we made a quick-and-dirty prototype to test on our selves if ideas would be viable.

5. Testing on users

We had two user testing sessions where we got a lot of feedback and new ideas on how to improve our game’s concept. It is surprising how many variations users discover on how to use the game.

So basically we were not alone the the team. Users made a great part of source of inspiration. After each of two sessions we had a large amount of improvements to concept. Watching and listening user inspired us for new ideas and provided as additional constraints to consider, for instance, the physical limitations of the body. There were cases when short persons played together with long persons, and it made the playing unequal (people with long hands had better chances to win).

6. Reiterating to 4th point and making improvements

After each user session we had full notebooks of ideas and reflections, so it was necessary to return back to concept making. In that point we also decided how to make the game, user instructions and box technologically. We made a sketches in Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.

7. Finishing product

Almost all parts were made by wood. It was cut precisely with a laser cutter which was fed up with Corel Draw sketches.

Game pack was actually not a box, but a bag, which we made with a sewing machine.

If you want to see more of the two week’s work, check out my personal Flickr Set or our course account.