My research inquiry for Major Studio 1 is:

I am studying how people interact with, and are influenced by, plants and foliage in their everyday lives in New York City, so that I can highlight the indispensable, dynamic relationship between the two.

I am quite unsure as to what my final product or artifact is going to be. During the 7 in 7 week, I have a rough idea of which aspects I want to focus on, such as:  symbiosis, juxtaposition of green and concrete, light, culture and so on. I do not have a role, a look and feel, or even an implementation in mind (Houde & Hill 3). To be frank, it is quite daunting to be at this stage with no idea (or maybe a highly vague one) regarding the kind of output I am seeking, while students from other MS1 sections already know what they are doing. In a way this might also be a good thing – to not get bogged down at the beginning of the project to a particular idea, and to have the freedom to truly explore the various facets my research inquiry could lead to.

In my elective Game Design as Play Design, I am a currently working on a multiplayer card game where the goal is for players to put down all their task cards to win, similar to completing tasks in real life. The tasks are divided into 5 categories:  education, family & home, work, community and personal. For my first prototype, I used index cards to make all the cards. Since the artifact was going to be cards, what I created could be considered a physical, playable paper prototype (Macklin & Sharp). I represented the various categories by colour instead of writing them on the cards (to save time). This however, proved to be a bad decision as play-testers began laying their cards down after seeing only the colour (like in Uno) when they were supposed to be read the various tasks on the cards. The overall prototyping stage was so insightful since I now know what changes to make to the task cards and rules to design a better play experience. 

 

Works Cited

Houde, Stephanie, and Charles Hill. “What Do Prototypes Prototype?” What Do Prototypes Prototype, 1997, 1–16.

Macklin, Colleen, and John Sharp. “Chapter 10. Prototyping Your Game.” Essay. In Games, Design and Play: A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design. Boston etc.: Addison-Wesley, 2016.