Design

Key design decision

I’m going to talk about one of the three concepts we developed into a somewhat refined prototype.

We stumbled on an effective way of starting meaningful conversations by having players estimate the answers of their co-player.

My contribution, then, was in safeguarding this core effectiveness while simultaneously improving on it. I did this by coming up with alternative versions of several game elements, and testing these alternatives to see if the change was an improvement.

This can be seen in the designproces.

Project

Approach

heavily invest in teambonding to create a safe environment in which it is okay to discuss feelings surrounding death

researching and familiarizing oneself with this serious subject matter, by interviewing several experts in this subject field (e.g. an end-of-life coach, a preacher)

quickly creating throwaway concepts to redefine project deliverables and problem definitions

creating persona’s as the embodiment of three different problem definitions

evaluating on 1/6th of the project duration (something I picked up working on a previous project)

prototyping and playtesting to improve on game mechanics and interface/feedback clarity

Result / Evaluation

3 prototypes that each take a different approach on tackling the main problem

complete research, project and design documentation

design advice for a possible follow-up team

presented results to a group of ~30 subject field experts

featured on regional television

It’s possible to deal and design with heavy subject matter by being respectful and curious and the same time

Subject experts are a great way to get (additional) information about a vulnerable target audience, even if it imposes a risk because they’re not the target audience themselves

‘Exploratory’ does not mean ‘define no clear goals or deliverables’: it’s important to distinguish between ambiguity in the design process (which can absolutely be a good thing) and ambiguity in the project boundaries (which, you guessed it, is not a good thing)

1/6th evaluation yielded less information than I hoped for, but it did confirm everyone was still on board and motivated

Process

We wanted to know for whom we were going to design our games/toys/things, and wanted to get familiar with how care for the terminally ill worked right now. Because we had explicitly been told to not engage with the (vulnerable) target audience, we sought out experts in the subject field, ie. people that have to deal with the terminally ill elderly on a daily basis. Also, we shared our own experiences regarding death and communication with (terminally) ill family members.

All in all, this process was a liberating experience because by talking about these things, we broke the taboos surrounding the subject. This open way of speaking about death gave us some special moments where a stranger would open up and share his or her own experiences. It was an enriching life experience in its own right.

Of course, the subject ‘terminally ill elderly and their communication with their loved ones’ is a very broad subject, and much of the work we did was in carving out specific problems and definitions to guide what we were going to make.

The research coalesced into three personas, each with their own problem. Because we had quite a large team and our client mainly wanted to see different possibilities we decided to come up with solutions to all three problems.

I personally worked on two of the three resulting problem definitions, and helped shape the prototypes we showcased at the end of the project. We got a feature on the regional television for that showcase.

Our client was quite happy with the results. We showed our prototypes and explained the underlying design to a group of about 30 experts. We were encouraged to further develop these prototypes, but chose to focus on other projects instead.

Project Role

Niels de Jong – designer (tegeltjeswijsheid + levensverhaal), programmer

Youri Stans – game artist, designer (tegeltjeswijsheid)

Kris van Geel – interaction designer (geroerd)

Floris Roding – game artist, designer (levensverhaal)

Loren de Bont – game artist

I personally worked on two of the three concepts, created paper and digital prototypes for these concepts and iterated on those.

I also wrote the general design process documentation and the specific design process documentation for the two concepts.

Project Duration

17 weeks

started the 18th of september 2017

stopped the 23rd of january 2018

Play Time

The download of one of the prototypes is below

play time is 10~30 minutes depending on how much you talk

Links

Levenseinde Design Process (Dutch) (1279 downloads )

feature regional television

Levenseinde RTV Utrecht uitzending (2241 downloads ) (starting from 10m55s)

playable .apk of one of the concepts

tegeltjeswijsheid android (Dutch) (1425 downloads )

(please note this is a development version so you’ll need to be in developer mode and allow unsafe apps)

(2 player couch/hotseat co-op, works best on tablet)

Bezint eer ge begint is a relaxed choose your own painting game.

Design

Materials

Below you can see a onepage design of the core idea of the game

Project

Approach

Integrating the Design Thinking Process Guide (which means, a focus on empathizing with the target group)

Locking down the design after a certain point in time, to provide stability during production phase

Clear responsibilities for every teammember

Result / Evaluation

Group design really really is not a thing: only once we decreased the size of the group actively designing the game, were we able to produce results.

We spent too much time finding a good problem definition for the target group, resulting in not having enough time to hone the design of the final product.

I am glad I did not take on the responsilibity of being the project lead, allowing me to focus on both design and programming

Description

The goal for this project was to create a game elderly people could benefit from. This was a project I was thrilled to work on, for two reasons: one, it was the kind of project that I could see myself doing in the future: creating a game to help improve people’s lives and two, all of my teammembers were highly skilled with great mindsets.

So, creating something good would be easy right? Well … no. First of all, the target group proved to be tricky to adequately capture: it turns out old people are a very diverse group. Who would have thought. We needed to zoom in on a single problem, but this was a hard endeavour given the fact that during the earlier stages of the project, all seven! of us were trying to reach consensus about what to zoom in on.

We wanted to find the problem definition just right for our team, the school assignment and the target group.

Finding this exact right problem definition was a slow process. Too slow, in fact, so we split our group, giving just a few people control over the concept. In hindsight, this should have been one of the first things to do. These people could then gather all information and research findings other team members collected, and use that to create a concept. Discussions about this concept should be between a maximum of three people, and not between the whole group of seven.

With our small designer group, we were able to quickly define an approach to the project, supported by the large amount of research we already did.

However, we did not have much time left for production at that point. Fortunately, we weren’t short on artists, and we had created an art-heavy concept to put most of the production work on their shoulders.

I’m quite happy with the end result. We were aiming to create a game that proved games weren’t only an (often violent) means of entertainment, but could be gentle works of art too. Reactions that this “was a peaceful game” and “a bit like a real painting” hint that we may have achieved that goal.

Project Role

Niels de Jong – designer, programmer

Kevin van As – (only a part of the project) designer

Rody Muijers – project lead, artist

Esmeé van ‘t Hoff – artist

Loïs Vehof – artist

Youri Stans – artist

Sabeth van der Voort – art lead, artist

Project Duration

7 weeks

started the 8th of february, 2016

published on the 1st of april, 2016

Play time

5 minutes

Links

This game was originally designed for tablet. As such, it plays best on an android tablet.