[View as PDF]

Playtesting

The focus this week has been on deploying a working, testable prototype of the kindworks experience for use by the Boy Scouts of America. Through client connections to a BSA Troop, the team hopes to obtain useful feedback, and answers to the following questions:

• Will 10-year-olds play the game?
• Can the game model be adapted to a small, contained community (such as a family, school, organization)?
• Can the game be played without any electronic components?

So as to adapt the experience to be playable without reliance on technology, kindworks has developed a protocol for a one-week experiment:

• Distribute Gear Cards to BSA Troop via our client
• Gear Cards feature simplified design containing only blank space to record good deed stories by hand.
• Scouts are instructed to treat their home as the main hub for the game – they will aim to do a good deed and place Gear Cards on their refrigerator in an attempt to get their families involved.
• Family members can visit website to print new Gear Cards or use blank paper as a substitute, and add these Gear Cards to the refrigerator.
• Parents or guardians relay feedback to client, who relays it to the team.
• Feedback requested pertains to number of deeds performed by the family, types of deeds performed, and players’ reception to participating in the game.

              >>>                   

Market Research

Surveying is currently being performed to assess which aesthetics and slogans are most popular. An array of slogan options presented on prototype Gear Cards has been shown around the ETC building, and an online survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/L9PWLTF requesting feedback on slogan, gear shape, and font, has been distributed. Feedback thus far indicates that a rigid gear tooth is preferable to a rounded tooth, and the slogan “What kind of tomorrow will you build?” is an early favorite.

Raising Awareness, Merchandising

The team is also endeavoring to establish working test bases through Facebook and Twitter, getting the ball rolling by including kindworks Gear Cards and stories in status updates, as well as promoting the project pages at every opportunity.

In coordination with this effort is an initiative to produce kindworks-themed merchandise through zazzle. T-shirts and phone cases featuring the project logo, Facebook and Twitter profiles, Gear Card, and QR code have been ordered, and buttons, bags, bumper stickers are possibilities as well.

Nuts & Bolts

The development of the Web site is coming along – below are screenshots from the beta version of the kindworks site:

Additionally, the team has been showcasing the project to various ETC tour groups:

Building Towards Tomorrow

By this time next week, the team expects to have expanded its Facebook and Twitter presence, and hopes to have received some feedback from the playtest. Producing the project’s promotional videos is also on the radar, and the team will be moving ahead on art, coding, and documentation.

[View as PDF]

Midterm Report
This week, the team presented its progress to the ETC community at Halves Presentations, which serve as the midterm point of the semester. Informal feedback thus far has been positive, though the team awaits official critique from faculty, which will be received once all project teams have presented at the conclusion of the week.

The presentation content served primarily to introduce the project to faculty and other students, while framing the schedule and primary challenges moving forward. The team’s greatest challenge to this point has been an issue with FTPS server and framework compatibility, but that issue was resolved this week. Due to the compatibility issue, work on the programming was delayed, but is now well underway. The site map has been finalized, and a data structures flowchart was compiled this week, so the road map for addressing the back end of the Web site construction is set.

Regarding production, an art asset list is being used to manage the creation of graphics for the site, and a number of assets have been completed.

Playtesting, Marketing, Raising Awareness
An area of work that the team is bringing a more urgent focus to is playtesting. In addition to the CMU Buggy and Boy Scouts of America playtests planned, it has been the team’s goal to produce a redesign of the postable Gear blueprint and track response towards this different design.

Crucial to this endeavor is a strategic marketing approach – the postable Gears must attract and engage potential participants, and the content and placement of Gears must achieve this. To that end, the team is striving to devise a slogan and/or logo for the kindworks product to replace the QR code as the Gear’s focal point. As QR becomes a more mainstream technology, its attracting power will lessen, and the focus should be more on content than technology anyway, so as not to alienate those who lack the ability to scan codes. Hand-in-hand with the content revamping is an outreach initiative – the team is thinking of other ways for Gears to proliferate society, and is currently writing to local newspapers to generate awareness of the project. The team’s project Web site is also being tailored to the kindworks theme to receive visitors via playtesting efforts.

[View as PDF]

And, We’re Back!
When we last left our heroes, the team was dispersing to attend GDC and partake of spring break, using the opportunity to spread prototype kindworks cards around different locations. Already, the cards have received 25 total hits across 3 general areas. A few have even received hits in different locations, suggesting that passersby took it upon themselves to move around the cards.

During the past two weeks time, the team’s Halves Presentation has been taking shape, and art, design, and programming have all been moving forward. Work on the Web interface for all of the pages has been ongoing, and there is an asset for nearly all of the pages. A Site Map has been created and is being used as a shared reference point between programming and art. The design document for the experience has also been substantially expanded.

What’s Next?
The team is scheduled to present their work to this point at Monday afternoon’s Halves Presentations, so efforts at the tail end of this week have been directed towards preparation. The weekend will also be used for further rehearsal.

Once presentations are complete, the focus will return fully to production. It will be key that technical challenges be resolved and the programming completed in the next couple of weeks so that a functional Web site exists to support playtesting initiatives. Currently, the database has been set up, but the FTPS server is not compatible with the Joomla framework, so we are in the process of switching to an FTP system. Thanks to the assistance of Steve and Jon, as well as all of Terry’s work, this issue is being addressed as quickly as possible. The completed Site Map and Web art assets will prove instrumental in being able to develop the Web site swiftly.

Looking ahead, the team has a playtest planned with the CMU buggy event on April 20, and also will be able to test with the Boy Scouts of America via the client’s connections to the organization. The testing will give the team an idea of how players utilize the Web site features and whether the Calling Card mechanic is effective in drawing people to the experience. Based on findings, the features, content, and card aesthetic will likely be tweaked.

It should be an exciting road to the finish line, and the team is gearing up for a rapid production pace over the coming weeks. Feedback from Halves also will aid greatly in the team’s second-half progress. Thank you for reading, and expect another update at the end of this week!

[View as PDF]

Cranking Away
The development phase of the project is officially underway! This week, the team solidified the experience design in the form of a web feature list and site map flowchart, while establishing a server to develop the web site and setting the foundation for a database. Having a clear schematic of the site’s features and the flow of user experience allows for a compilation of all of the data structures that the back end must be working with at any given point in the experience. To that end, a data structures list has been established, and work on completing it is in progress. The visual design of the various pages for the web site is also underway. Concepts for the design of the Gears in the Machine have been produced, as well as a home page design:

[Gear style concept]

[Home page layout concept]

[Home page style concept]

The team has also addressed the challenge of logically displaying Gears within the Machine. The current plan is to treat Gear art assets as adjacent tiles, each containing some incidental art in the form of smaller connecting gears that will line up with the smaller incidental gear art on the adjacent tiles. This paradigm would necessitate a maximum adjacent Gear limit of eight, but it would provide a neat visual and logical framework for managing the space in the Machine. The team is also considering how best to apply border glow and other visual effects to highlight connectivity between Gears.

Finally, manufacturing of an initial batch of Gear Card prototypes has been undertaken – this week the team printed approximately one hundred Gear Cards on multi-colored construction paper for distribution. Each card features a QR Code link to the Glatitude project web site and the kindworks logo, and is cut into the shape of a simple gear with defined edges and teeth. Several have already been posted around the ETC building, and some web site hits have been recorded. Over the next week, the team will be placing them in public places around Pittsburgh, as well as utilizing spring travel plans to post cards in areas such as Boston. The QR codes on the cards will allow the team to track how many times each card is scanned, as well as where the scan took place. The next step in testing the appeal of these cards is to experiment with different content and stylistic designs to see which type of approach is best received.

[The team hard at work]

Next Steps
This coming week is the week of the Game Developer’s Conference, and so a significant portion of the team will be away. Because the following week is the CMU spring break period, the team has decided to swap that period with this week, taking leave simultaneously with those already away at GDC, and returning to work during the scheduled spring break week.

While away, the team will be working on completing the design documentation and distributing Gear cards, as well as beginning to prepare the mid-semester project presentation. Once everyone has returned, there will be one week of work before the Halves presentation on Monday (3/19), during which the focus will be on developing a working web prototype, setting up the database, content design, art asset production, and Gear Card testing.

[View as PDF]

Getting the Gears Turning
At the conclusion of last week, the team had begun to revamp the theme of the game so as to stand out more to potential players – this week, efforts centered around mapping the existing design to a gear/machine theme. Instead of growing trees, the player’s activity will be constructing a Machine, one Gear [or Cog] at a time. Every Gear in the Machine will represent the connection made, just as the Leaf was representative in the Tree system. In this way, the game is presented as a working engine that people can become a part of and impact in concrete, meaningful ways.

Current challenges include whether the Machine is a personal or communal entity, the mechanics of passing and receiving data through the game system, and the mapping of Gears in the virtual Machine in a relevant way. The team has been discussing these issues daily, working with gear-shaped paper cutouts to ease the visualization of abstract concepts in discussions, as well as receiving feedback from visitors to the ETC building.

A focus group session was also held at the end of this week to assess reactions to different types of deeds, and lots of useful feedback was received in addition to some input regarding the game system in general. It has proven very helpful to present the design challenges to fresh pairs of eyes. Participants also provided feedback on some preliminary art styles, and the overwhelming trend in the responses was a preference for bright, solid, clearly-defined gears with a bit of a vibrant color scheme.

Next Steps
Focus group testing will continue next week to assess different aesthetics and content for the Gear Card artifacts. The results from this week’s session have made the team scrutinize the general vs. specific presentation of good deeds, and this question will be in focus next week as well.

With the theme at least nailed down, next week’s work should resolve the mechanical and ideological questions of the game system – a design document will be compiled in addition to the design log to serve as a solid frame of reference during development. The game system’s features will also be illustrated in diagram form so as to communicate the ideas more clearly.

Work has already begun on using php to construct a test site for the game’s online component, and once a solid design documentation base has been established, the Web UI and content design, including types of deeds, features for the online component, Gear Card layout and content, will be addressed.

The team will be working with a sense of urgency this coming week, as GDC and Spring Break are looming, with Halves Presentations shortly to follow. The goal is to have the major design challenges solved by then with clear illustration of the game system.

[View as PDF]

Quarter Walk-around Presentations
This week’s focus was largely on Wednesday’s quarter-semester walk-around presentations in which the team presented its design ideas to the ETC faculty and held brief discussions to obtain a wide variety of helpful feedback. The goal in mind is to be able to commit to a direction after taking in and analyzing this feedback.

Faculty were generally quite positive in their reactions to the project. Many recognized the great design challenge of meshing game mechanics with the ideals of altruism and were pleased with the team’s design approach thus far. The anonymous posting, ninja theme, inherent rewards model, and community elements were received very favorably. Concerns were minimal, but included the presentation of the experience as a game when it is not quite a game as many would define it, the fact that a tree-nurturing theme has been done before, and the possibility of undermining the ideal of altruism through rewards.

Several useful feature suggestions also were given, some of which underscored previous ideas generated in the team’s design process. Among features the team is considering incorporating into the design are a request feature where players can seek help directly, a reputation feature like those seen on sites such as ebay, an RPG-style leveling mechanic, customization options, and the use of a platform like Facebook as a vehicle for generating awareness of the project.

Next Steps
The team has distilled the design of the experience into its most general components and is currently most focused on committing to a theme that will most effectively attract people to the product. In addition to the ninjas and trees theme, the team has discussed the idea of a gear/machine theme that may stand out more than the heavily-used tree motif. By the beginning of next week, mock-ups illustrating this theme will be produced.

From there, the team will be able to begin testing the human interaction component of the experience. The Boom Boom Cards will be analyzed with the goal of understanding what reactions each deed provokes. Additionally, concept cards will be generated and posted around the ETC and around the city of Pittsburgh – the team will be able to track QR hits or email responses for cards utilizing different approaches. This will inform how much and what type of information to include on cards, as well as what type of theme may be appealing and for which demographics.

[View as PDF]

Distilling Ideas
The week began with a review of what was learned in each of the previous week’s meetings. The feedback gained had provided the team with a variety of perspectives and nicely framed the project’s next steps. A key point of interest was that of approaching two groups – the more altruistic and the less altruistic – as well as focusing on two aspects of the project – the human interaction at its core, and the virtual framework, or game layer supporting it. This focus led the team into categorizing the conceptualized game models into a Plan A and B.

Plan A incorporated the Tree Framework idea with the core human interaction of exchanging cards or bracelets prompting players to perform good deeds. Plan B was formed around the idea of creating a collectible trading card game around the interaction. However, there were still problems associated with the card interaction – namely the risk of such an exchange coming off as disingenuous. By doing a good deed for someone, only to follow up by handing the recipient a card asking for something in return (relating back to the game), the very spirit of Pay it Forward would be broken. The team needed to focus more on the human experience and means of solving this dilemma.

The Human Experience
The team met with Linda Swaney of Habitat for Humanity to understand more about charity psychology, and the meeting clarified much about human nature with regards to altruism. Recognizing that volunteers want to feel good by helping others really brought people’s motivations into focus – the self-serving needs component was something this project would need to take advantage of rather than ignore. Thus, the value of raising awareness became something the team began to zero-in on. Additionally, the notions of accountability and empowerment for recipients of goodwill were brought to attention.

Thus, after some thought, the team decided to focus Plan A around an “Anonymous Post” type human interaction, rather than a direct hand-off from one player to another. By leaving a card in a public place, anyone who gets involved with it would be doing so fully voluntarily, free of any guilt or feelings of being used. The card also could become a fairly compelling object through mystery, if themed properly. The team then worked this human interaction into the game model that utilizes the Tree framework, leaving the possible use of a trading card game in a separate pocket as a Plan B.

Moving Forward
Next Wednesday (2/15) the team will undergo Quarter-Semester Walk-arounds at the ETC, in which faculty will visit the room in 20-minute increments to absorb information about the project and offer feedback and perspective. It will be a time for the team to take advantage of the resources available in the building, and from getting the takes of faculty from different backgrounds, an evaluation of the project’s direction can be made. Ideally, in the days following the walk-around, the team will be able to commit to a direction and begin the development phase of this project.

In preparation of the event, the team will be creating a physical display of the semester’s thought-process, mapping out and diagramming the Plan A game concept, mocking up art, and investigating tech frameworks, as well as theming the room to match the project’s focus. It is an exciting time for Project Glatitude, as the design has definitely begun to hit its stride. Look forward to the team’s post-quarters report, and have a great week!

[View as PDF]

Iteration and Rapid Prototyping

The team’s goals this week were to begin to categorize ideas so as to move closer to a solidified design upon which to iterate, while meeting with various experts to obtain their perspectives.

A crucial consideration at this point in the design phase has been the issue of extrinsic rewards in games vs. the intrinsic motivational nature of the Pay-it-Forward concept. The team brainstormed different types of game models and mechanics that can be motivational in different ways, as well as psychological factors underlying charity missions. This provided a useful foundation upon which to brainstorm.

The most prominent concept being discussed right now is that of a network building game where resources feed into each other in a cyclical way, powered by performing kind acts in real life. The visualization of connections created and the impact of one deed extending far beyond its initial momentum is a key part of this project’s vision, and this game concept has the potential for providing such a visualization. Players essentially exchange “Seeds” and “Sprouts,” different types of deed cards – Sprouts produce Seeds, and Seeds grow into new Sprouts, but only through the process of giving. A Web portal design has been mocked up, and the features of this model are coming into focus. But the team is continuing to file away any ideas that do not fit into this model as a contingency plan.

Outreach

In concert with their design efforts this week, the team has been obtaining perspectives from several professionals, including Clay Heaton of GameAid, Charley Johnson of the Pay it Forward Foundation, game and visual design expert Evan Hirsch, ETC Professor Drew Davidson, and Mary Beth Campbell of Boom Boom Cards.

These meetings have been extremely informative, providing feedback about all areas of the experience that is to be designed. Many questions have been answered, concerns resolved, and inspirations formed, and the team is still in the process of sifting through all of the new information.

Moving Forward

From here, the goal is to commit to an idea and develop a sort of business plan for it – outline how the experience should motivate players and keep them interested. The team will be working on that next week as well as resolving key design decisions. Additionally, an official logo has been created, and will be incorporated into a poster design by Monday.

[VIEW AS PDF]

Welcome Back!
In Week 2, the team’s focus was on generating ideas for the general flow and structure of the experience that is to be created. Alongside this process lay the pursuit of a team identity, as the foundation of the project website was established, and the team decided on its name, drafting some concepts for a logo.

Glatitude
The team has elected to call itself “Glatitude,” a name encompassing the values of gladness and gratitude that are core to the pay-it-forward concept, while also incorporating the word latitude, which touches on the geographical aspect of the project and its community-oriented focus. This name will be used to refer to the team and to the ETC project, but any experience or product created will likely be given its own name.

Boom Boom Cards
The team examined the Boom Boom Cards phenomenon as a starting point in their brainstorming exercises this week. Currently there are but a handful of pay-it-forward experiences, though none are heavily game-oriented. Akoha, a card game that ran from 2008-2011, utilized point values and assigned missions, and this seems to be the most gamified attempt at a pay-it-forward experience. Boom Boom is essentially Akoha minus the point designations, and seeks to foster a worldwide community through the card game.

Inspirations the team has taken from Boom Boom include the web portal through which users can share stories, search the different places cards have been played, comment on others’ posts, and view one’s deck. While the team may not follow a card model, the idea of some sort of traveling, trackable object is appealing. However, the greatest challenge associated with this method is the potential for guilt inherent in the playing forward of the object. Both Akoha and Boom Boom suffer from complications of extrinsic motivation and inherent guilt. Additionally, there were several other key weaknesses apparent in Boom Boom’s model, such as the lack of an elegant visualization for card history and the lack of any strong network between users.

Scope, Deliverables, Frameworks
A web portal for a game is something the team could easily create, and already investigations into WordPress features revealed plugins that connect with other media such as Facebook and Twitter. However, a mobile app, as Boom Boom provides, may lie beyond the scope of this semester. The team is still looking into ways mobile devices can enhance the experience (without being required for it) outside of the creation of an app. QR scanners, social media applications, and mobile-friendly interfaces for WordPress provide many possibilities.

The greatest question the team faces related to determining the scope and deliverables of the project is that of the game layer of the experience. Is the game a distinct entity that the real-world pay-it-forward behavior feeds into, as some sort of extrinsic motivator (i.e. Facebook games, virtual currencies)? Or is the game more of a meta-layer of the real-world pay-it-forward actions? A separate entity with a tied-in virtual currency would possess an inherent disconnect, while a metagame around paying it forward would be much more elegant and relevant. Thus, efforts this week were focused on devising ways to construct this metagame.

Game Structure
Currently, prominent ideas the team has been discussing are those of collection and competitive elements. Players could obtain sets of artifacts (objects, analogous to the cards in Boom Boom and Akoha) consisting of random elements, much in the way trading card packs are assorted. The goal could be to collect every element of a larger set, each pack being one attempt at getting closer to that goal. Players would obtain an initial set when they first come to the game, and additional sets could be acquired only after playing forward each element of a set. Elements could have varying degrees of activation, becoming upgraded by being played forward, and upgraded again when the recipient shares a story of the play online, establishing a connection. Players could also receive additional elements when elements they played forward are played forward subsequently.

The community-forming aspect of the experience would constitute building and competitive gameplay elements. For every play, if both the giver and recipient share a story of the event, a connection could become established, represented as two nodes on a map joined by a line. Every player involved in the game would be represented as a node, and every connection formed could be joined to an existing network. In this way communities could be formed. Communities could be listed in order of ranked size online, and a goal could be to become the largest community, or to merge with other communities, fostering a sense of friendly competition, or a desire to strive.

Moving Forward
The next step for the team is to solidify this general structure of the experience, through the acts of paper prototyping and creative brainstorming. As per client George Blobe’s suggestion at this week’s Skype conference, the team will be crafting a manual experience representing the basic elements before adding technology to the consideration. This technique should be helpful in establishing a sound concept. The team is currently utilizing a list of two dozen brainstorming techniques provided by faculty advisor John Dessler to aid in their thinking, and will continue to do so next week. One of the challenges currently is to devise an artifact that can be passed forward, encapsulate the idea of a good deed free of obligation, be collectible, and make the player want to get involved in the game.

In the next week or two the team also should be settling on the exact form of the project deliverables, performing a feasibility analysis to do so. As the game structure becomes more defined, so too will the sense of what resources are required to create it. Outreach efforts will be kicked off with a Skype conference with Clay Heaton on Tuesday, and by the end of Week 3 a team logo and poster will be completed. Thank you for reading, and expect some key updates by February 3!

[VIEW AS PDF]

Project Objective:
The stated goal of the Pay it Forward project is to create a game that embraces and promotes the Pay it Forward concept – the idea of performing random acts of kindness for others in the interest of encouraging recipients of such goodwill to do the same. In this way, giving, gratitude, and gladness are passed on exponentially from person to person.

Accomplishments:
In this initial week of work on this project, the team began to delve into the Pay it Forward concept, studying the project description, researching related endeavors in this area, and meeting with the project’s client. On Monday, the team met for the first time, and members introduced themselves to one another. Everyone was very excited about this project from the start, and so some basic research was done to acquaint the team with the ideas at the core of this project.

A client meeting was set for Thursday, and the team held a handful of meetings before that point to discuss what had been found while researching, and to conceive a small array of potential directions that could be presented in the client meeting. In this time a collaborative tool set was established through Google docs, and meeting logistics with faculty advisers were resolved.

On Thursday, Mr. George Blobe, CEO of the Linden Foundation visited the team for a meeting to exchange ideas and discuss the direction of the project. George’s feedback was instrumental in refining the team’s understanding of this project’s goals, and the general feeling following the meeting was one of enthusiasm and encouragement.

Direction:
Key objectives for the project were emphasized in the meeting with George, giving the team a strong direction in which to direct design efforts. Crucial to the experience is that it is centered around real-world human interaction; a web portal or other technology may be used to enhance and gamify the experience, but the spirit of the Pay it Forward concept is performing spontaneous acts of goodwill in a real-world environment.

Additionally, a community aspect was stressed; in addition to establishing a grassroots community around the game, metrics of play may be community-oriented, and the game itself should be something that the community can sustain on its own, following the wiki model.

George also was a proponent of incorporating physical artifacts, such as cards, that serve as reminders of omnipresent opportunity. In this way, the recipient of a card should feel as though receiving an opportunity, not a burdensome responsibility. Players should be intrinsically motivated to pay it forward.

Technologically, solutions for meeting the project’s goals may likely involve augmented reality, a web portal, location tracking functionality, and network visibility drawing from the metaphor of a tree and the Google mechanic. A Web application would be a simple and easy way for players to participate in an online community, view their connections, manage game resources, and view the history of artifacts related to their acts of goodwill. An augmented reality component, such as QR codes, may be useful for providing players with a mobile method of obtaining instant feedback, as well as contributing geographical data to the experience. When online, the experience should relate the player to connections made between other players, deeds and artifacts, and geographic locations, allowing the player to view the effect and context of relevant actions taken in the game.

Related Work:
Points of reference for this project are games such as Akoha and Boom Boom, card games utilizing cards as physical representations of good deeds, incorporating point values, specific challenges, and codes corresponding to an online component. Karma Seed is a similar endeavor. Web sites such as Baidu and Mystery Seeker provided some inspiration in terms of the potential for requesting particular help among a community, and the exchange of random challenges between players. Drawing upon these sources for inspiration, the challenge will be to go beyond what has been done in a meaningful way, while meeting the primary project goals.

Moving Forward:
The goal for next week is to continue brainstorming, building off of what was discussed this week, ultimately deciding on one or a small group of game concepts that would be feasible for this team to complete in a semester and that would meet the project’s goals. Additionally, the team expects to be establishing a web presence, name, and logo by the end of Week 2.

This concludes the news for the first week! Look for the Week 2 newsletter next Friday, January 27. This should be a great semester!