Week 5 was a busy week, which unbelievably already marks 25% on the way to the end of the semester. With that landmark came what we call Quarters presentations, a chance for us to introduce our project to the entire ETC faculty. We had our meetings on Monday and got a lot of interesting feedback from many diverse perspectives.
Partially due to that feedback, we pointed ourselves towards getting a functional UI designed to guide our players through the experience, something we aim to playtest next week. We also got a lot of feedback about our scoring system—which in our presentation was just money—and while we were happy to see that the faculty generally seemed supportive of our plan to add a happiness or comfort scale, we still have some thinking to do about exactly how that will manifest itself in the experience.
We also saw a lot of excitement (and demand for) an experience that a) provably taught and changed the habits of students and b) provides something beyond a one-time experience in a science center could provide. We have been developing a 9-week educational plan to tie into the 9-week practical science course taught at Elizabeth Forward, which will definitely provide something beyond the other Energy Lab experiences, and we’ll be seeking a lot of feedback on that over the coming weeks. As a matter of fact, Andrew met with Elizabeth Forward on Thursday to begin to refine that very plan. We also presented the school with a preliminary mock-up of our kiosk design:
Finally, we had some important design realizations as we reviewed our upgrade and habit choices in the game: it seems that in reality, the bulk of the power in the game rests in the habit changes, not in the upgrades. This throws the balance of our game in a bit of a different direction, but it’s not one we’re unhappy about at all. On the contrary, one of our main goals is to show 7th graders that they can have an impact, and this revelation will definitely help.
We hope that next week will gain us lots of insight as we put our digital game out into the world for the first time. Stay tuned!
-Team Joule