This week started off with quarter presentations. We presented our idea to the faculty and they had some good feedback regarding the game. One of the most important feedback we received was relating to how much are the players compromising to play the game. Since the game is about team management and project management, what drives to player to play well with the team and how important is it for them to be dedicated in this experience. There were few interesting ideas of extending the game into 3-4 days. We are thinking about deriving inspiration from free to play games like Farmville where the players need to return to the game after a set amount of time as it is held as a blocker, preventing the team from moving ahead with their tasks.

Other questions revolved around how we could validate and evaluate the soft skills that the players are learning. One previous project that kept coming up was River Run which was aimed at building similar skills using the iPad as a medium. We are also planning on playing board games like Pandemic to get a better sense and feel of how project management works and how failing the first time will make players more driven into finishing the game with a better score the next time around.

We also plan on meeting Martha Hardy from CMU the coming week who has outlined a course on project management and teamwork. This will be an important step into understanding project management in a professional setting.

We also watched the documentary titled “A Faster Horse” which outlined the process that went into the making of the 2015 Mustang. It taught us to think about project management and problem solving from an automobile space.

We also made headway and contacted the Formula SAE advisor at University of Pittsburgh and we plan on meeting him on Monday.