The Work This Week:
Week three was spent expanding our ideation and narrowing our focus.
We started off the week by reviewing the four final options we wanted to present to Bryan Doerries, making sure they were where they needed to be conceptually, and using them prepare for our call with Mr. Doerries the next day.
That call was very enlightening, and helped us to understand Theater of War’s core values much more clearly. It also resulted in a new design pillar: The audience knows more than we do. Taking the lead from Mr. Doerries preferences, we left the call with two options to move forward with; a radio-play table top game, and an audio/text experience, both based around Ajax and Philoctetes.
Over the next several days, we fleshed out designs that fit within the scope of our remaining time, fit the values Mr. Doerries wanted to make sure were present, served the texts of Theater of War as well as possible, and matched the skill sets we knew we could best bring to the project. Those ideas have been sent back to Mr. Doerries for his final selection.
While the deliverable is still in question, the team has started narrowing down what we want our playtest audience to be. Our ideal playtesters are going to look very much like Theater of War’s target audience; active duty service members, veterans, and their families. We’re also aiming to include physiologists in our playtests, to make sure we’re approaching the content in a correct and approachable manner. The team has reached out to our contacts, and is starting to see who is available.
This week, we’ve also made progress on less tangible fronts: Branding materials are on track to be polished and finished by next Friday’s deadline
On a lighter note, we’ve also started to make ourselves comfortable in our work space. Dealing with topics that have as much gravity as mental health and healing from trauma means that we need to be present with our own emotions, and honest with how we process them. As a way to address this, each team member now has a stuffed animal in the project room.
