Last week, I wrote my blog post right after my midterm presentation and said that I had a rough idea on which aspects I want to focus on during the 7 in 7 week. This isn’t true anymore. Though I’d be exploring some of what I had in mind, the past week has given me both time  and opportunity to mull over, review and reflect on the feedback I got from visiting critics and peers. I guess this can, in a way, be considered the ‘incubate’ phase of the six-part approach to making revisions outlined by Macklin and Sharp in In Games, Design and Play: A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design. 

What I find really interesting as we start prototyping is how differently we are all approaching it. Individually, our prototyping ideas range extensively in terms of the final output, medium, who we’ll be catering to, what materials we’ll be using, etc, all informed by our research inquiry. On a broader scale, the manner in which each Major Studio professor is approaching the 7 in 7 itself is different. Could the 5 in 7, an exercise some sections are doing, be an iteration of the original DT 7 in 7, probably to give the students more time to work, resulting in better results?

Some students have already begun working whereas in my section we have few days to plan and prepare for our prototypes. Currently, I have a loosely tethered idea with many forms and possibilities. I need to work towards something more specific over the course of the next week. In class, we collectively created a long verb list to describe our precedents, what we’d like our own projects to reflect, and what we are not usually used to (in an attempt to step out of our own comfort zones). We wrote the ‘what’ and ‘why’ behind our projects and passed the sheets around in class for others to offer ideas and suggestions with respect to how we could further narrow down or approach our intended goal. I view this exercise itself as a form of iteration, since we were all trying to brainstorm, hone and develop an original idea.

After reviewing peer suggestions, we selected few that seemed the most interesting, viable and exciting. We passed the sheets around again to brainstorm on different points of view or users that our project could engage, specifically defining a single audience, an internal group within Parsons and an external group. We jotted down the various forms or media that are ideas could translate into, and then worked on quick thumbnails to visualise them. We analysed each using the role – implementation – look and feel framework that we read last week (Houde & Hill 3). In a 9 by 9 grid, we listed out prototype ideas that were achievable within a 24 hour timeframe, along with the form and purpose of each.

As we continue working on our MS1 projects for the rest of the semester, we must also, with a very open mindset, consider the key concepts or tools inherent to the iterative process – conceptual foresight that comes with experience, penetration to see deeper meaning, redefining a particular aspect, and problem sensitivity to stay on track (Macklin & Sharp 52-56).

• Who might we go to for these insights – teachers, experts/ practitioners in the field, someone skilled or technically proficient to help us out, the target audience?
• If you hit a roadblock or failure, which aspect(s) of your project would you be relooking at or  are open to compromising?

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

Sharp, John, Colleen Macklin, IEEE Xplore (Online Service), distributor, publisher MIT Press, John Sharp, Colleen Macklin, Steven Davis, Yu Jen Chen, Tuba Ozkan, and Carla Molins Pitarch. 2019. Iterate : Ten Lessons in Design and Failure. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.

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.