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Dev Blog: Week 2

In week 2, we focused on continuing our research and narrowing our focus.

The beginning was mostly comprised of research and brainstorming. As a team, we watched Her (2013, dir Spike Jonze) and individuals viewed Blade Runner (1982 dir. Ridley Scott) and Ex Machina (2014, dir. Alex Garland). A trend we immediately noticed was that most science fiction depicts AI as a force that will have a negative effect on humanity, and sometimes ending human existence itself. Some however, have more bittersweet endings, like Her and Blade Runner.

While we conducted research we began to visualize our brainstorming. Pictured below are a composition box, mind map, and initial ideas.

Composition Box
Mind Map

Mid way through the week we met with our adviser, Heather Kelley, to talk about our brainstorming and initial ideas. We also presented our Mission Statement and edited it with Heather’s assistance. Our Mission Statement is as follows:

Make an interactive experience that challenges misconceptions of Artificial Intelligence.

We came to this conclusion after considering that Pamela has committed her life and work to spread the truth of AI. We are committed to making an experience that shows the same fairness to AI and presents a more realistic vision of the near future. We wish to show the positive partnership that could form between AI and humans, but make sure to show the negative side as well. From this point Heather recommended we shift into researching applications of AI and devise experiences that could be made using the applications as inspiration.

We spent the second half of the week researching applications of AI.We found that AI will have a monumental impact on the human experience. From this we brainstormed a list of potential experiences that can be seen in the picture below.

Overall, we spent the week narrowing our focus down to a list of potential experiences:

  1. Transportation AI
  2. Robot Assisted Surgery
  3. Financial Simulation
  4. Environmental AI

Moving in to next week. We plan to prototype these experiences on paper and playtest. From here, we can pick the most interesting idea and move into production.