Blogs

This post-mortem documents what we think we did well, what was challenging and what our takeaways are.

This week we focused on preparing for our final presentation. We have made the slide deck and practiced both in the project room and in the actual space several times. On Thursday, the team went to Assemble to playtest. We focused on playtesting the Color Wheel activity. We have also discussed the hand-off of the project with our client.

This week the team has been working on documentation and finishing up the Color Wheel activity (formerly named Make-A-Rainbow). We have finished the first draft of our documentation, and we are essentially done with the Color Wheel activity. It is also the soft opening week this week. There are 8 faculty members who visited our project room, including our faculty consultant, Mo Mahler.

This week the team focused on building the Make-A-Rainbow activity as well as documenting our design and user guide. The Make-A-Rainbow activity’s hardware part is almost done. We have also finished the first draft of the instructions for each activity. On Friday, Mo Mahler, our faculty advisor, came by, and together we went over the design and the form factor of Make-A-Rainbow.

This Monday, we play tested again at West Liberty University, where our client, Lou Karas, is based at. After we came back, we debriefed both the Saturday playtest at ETC and the Monday playtest at WLU. During our faculty meeting, the team and our faculty advisor, Ricardo Washington, did some brainstorming to see if we could give the “Make-a-Rainbow” activity more depth. We have landed on a design that incorporates the color wheel as well as tertiary colors. The team has presented our new design to our client, and we have made a plan on how to fabricate this activity and what needs to be done for documentation. On Wednesday, Bob Doepel, a CMU alumnus who currently works for Chicago Scenic Studio visited our project room, and the team showed some of our activities. Although this week is a short week, we have made important decisions that will help us move forward.

This week we focused on fabricating the hardware prototypes and preparing for the upcoming playtests on Saturday, April 1 and Monday, April 4. We have also started documenting our design process and making tutorials for our activities. On Friday we had the chance to talk with members from Simcoach Games, Jack, Pavan and Bryan and our faculty consultant Mo Mahler.

This week we have been focusing on fabricating the whiteboard activity and testing the functionality of the make-a-rainbow hardware. We also had the chance to chat with our client’s class about documenting these activities. On Friday, Mateo Uguzzoni, a faculty candidate and urban game designer, visited our project room and gave us some suggestions.

This week we focused on fabricating the hardware as well as further developing our current prototypes. We have faced some challenges during the process, and made adjustments accordingly. The team also playtested at Assemble on Thursday, Mar 17 with prototypes that had new features. On Friday, the team met with our faculty consultant Mo Mahler who gave us both positive and constructive feedback. We then had a meeting to discuss our future plans regarding deliverables, design and scope.

This week we had our halves presentation on Monday to showcase our work in front of the faculty and peers at ETC. Our client, Lou Karas, was also in the audience to support us. We then collected feedback and planned what needs to be done before our next playtest. For the rest of the week, we made progress on further developing and fabricating the activities.

This week we focused on preparing for our halves presentation for next week Monday. We have also begun assembling a bill of materials for the equipment needed to continue building out our project. We have also made plans with Assemble, a community space for art and technology in Pittsburgh, to playtest our project there on March 17th with one of their after school programs.