Newsletter 3: January 30th

• By vsangubh
• Posted in Uncategorized
• On January 31, 2015
• 1 Comment.

Newsletter 3 – 30^th January 2015

Overview:

This week we took some of the learning from last week and decided to focus ourselves on a singular task. We wanted to by quarters come up with a playable prototype of one of our ideas.

Process of Prototyping:

Having visited Mountainview the week prior we were able to show our client Jennifer Smith the ideas that we had been building upon. The feedback we got gave us a good place to start building out a prototype. Having discussed amongst ourselves, we decided that since we all liked the idea of the interactive map, we would start there and see where it took us.

So for most of this week the team has been working on getting a working prototype of the interactive map onto the tablet. We have been experimenting with the idea to see what works and what doesn’t work, because we are doing this early on in the semester we hope that this can lead us to what we find is the best way to disperse the content that we want to. Also by prototyping we hope to gain some insight into what works to our strengths and what doesn’t, helping us focus ourselves to play to our strengths rather than weaknesses.

Having a built prototype will also be useful for the client discussions moving forward, we can talk about particular details which are viewable and interactive. This will allow us to refine the game based on the clients expectations and can plot our progress through rapid iteration to ensure that we are going the direction that is expected of us. Also this early prototype can act as a litmus test; we will know immediately if we have set off on an incorrect path and can rectify and learn from our mistakes before we even plot out a full production.

Logo:

Our artists have been working hard on getting a logo and poster done and we are happy to announce that this week we got our logo completed.

Website:

We have also began working on updating our website and as time goes by this website will be filled with content documenting the project and the process by which we went from the initial design discussions to our end product. Do visit and give some feedback on how to improve it. The address is:

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/gaia/

Moving Forward:

Going into next week, we will have to work out some kinks in our pipeline to ensure that it runs smoothly and people are constantly communicating their thoughts, idea and the state of their work.

We also hope to use the work we have done to help complete some type of playable experience so that we can start defining what we want our end product to be or not to be.