Our client was visiting Pittsburgh last week and we got a chance to hear from her how does she feel about the project.

iThrive considers this project to be a success based on the lessons we learned and our final games.

“One of the important factors for us is that teens were included in the design and iteration of this game every step of the way. iThrive Games finds that to be crucial when developing games for a teen audience, and Team Mindset carried through on this requirement beautifully.” Says Heidi McDonald, Senior Creative Director at  iThrive Games.

“The process experienced by the students helped us to refine our design resources in key ways; we will now be including information about transformational frameworks and their importance, as well as questions that encourage designers to think in this way about their projects before they start designing them.”

We also learned that iThrive have been using our lessons learned to help another team they are working with at DePaul University in Chicago. They have an additional semester to complete their work.

Heidi also commented about the festival, saying  “it was thrilling to watch so many people enjoying the Growth Mindset game at the Winter Festival: students, professional designers, educators and even a retired counselor. People were already asking where they can get this […]”

She also detailed the next steps for each one of the games:

• The Growth Mindset game – iThrive already have plans to test it as soon as possible in two schools and with a mental health provider. They are also pursuing a few different avenues regarding the best means of distribution for the product.
• The Empathy game is considered by iThrive as a testable vertical slice. “[…]We will be looking to build a research study around this with teens, so that we can use the combination of the digital prototype, the documentation, and the research data to gather funding to build a fuller version of the game, and distribute it.”
• The Curiosity game showed iThrive that we need to go back to the drawing board on our Curiosity Design Resource. The problem is that curiosity related game mechanics are familiar to players and are inherent to many games. It’s hard to create learning moments when it’s possible the players are just doing what they are used to.

“We are grateful to Team Mindset for their thoughtful approach to these difficult concepts and are very pleased with their work. Not only are we very satisfied with the results, but we hope to follow the careers of these developers to see whether working on this project has influenced them in their overall approach. This was iThrive’s first time working with students at the ETC, and we expect that it will not be the last. Thank you, Team Mindset, and thank you, ETC!”