Design is a game

Project: Design is a game
Date: 20090907-20090930

It was a first project in Interaction design programme first year.
We were going to design a board game to know the whole design process including Interview, Research and Reflection part.

Week 1
Interview skills
We had an interview with 3 person in Sogeti a consultancy specializing in local professional IT services.
List all the dilemmas we found in their working process.
“Decision making in time limit”
Portrait
Storyboard
Presentation

Week 2
Playing toy bricks together, try to feel collaboration in these games.
Rebuild a new group
We pick a new dilemma (grow or not grow, closeness and communication problem), which is not the original one I got from the interviewing. But I think the new one would inspire us.
We felt this board game should play with 2-4 players who are your opponents or collaborator. There would be hundreds tactics jumping out of people’s heads to win. Thus the game can be played lots times.
We listed all the games we like such as Monopoly, Chess, Uno (a card game), Five in a row and etc, try to find out why people like to play. We agreed that there are some key words should used to characterize our game like strategy, simple, fun.
We agreed to put the company professional situations behind the game. People would learn something after playing it, but would not get it from the surface obviously.
Brainstorm in green room with a whiteboard and lots magnet pins
Set down one direction and made a “mock-up”
After testing the concept and discovering where it failed and succeeded, we received most feedbacks that complaining this game is too difficult to understand how to play at the first time.
Refine the rule and test the balance
Prepare the materials, cut and sand 160 wood cubes

Week 3
Make 4 copies of paper match box for this game, Apply a coat of primer, spray cubes with paint.
Incised the board with laser machine
Design the instruction illustration.
Final test

Week 4
At the end of this project, I received the all the evaluation forms from the students played this game BQB. Of course, it’s a successful game and the word “fun” is frequently mentioned by people. And they also like the idea of 3 dimensional moves.
There are also some comments about the weak aspect I collected,
“It took a while to figure out the instructions.”
“The instructions was not easy to understand, could be improved.”
Reflection of this project.