I intentionally chose the harder brief because it allowed me to engage in some more research to try and bring an understanding of cognitive science into my game. I feel I was able to do this, however what I have implemented is very surface level and I hope to be more through in the future.
Over the project I was reasonably calm. I felt the first week went better as I was able to stay after classes consistently over the week and hit my targets for my goals. I was able to watch TED Talks from people who had suffered with PND and also read a paper on a recommended treatment method. I then incorporated this understanding into my design. I wanted to make a game that didn’t feel stigmatizing to play, but at the same time encouraged healthy mental habits and taught the player more about their own mental health. I think the fantasy RPG genre was a great place to do this because it meant there could be humor and excitement to lessons as they’re told through the story, rather than the app simply functioning as a dry textbook. I am glad I used the rapid ideation method (even if I didn’t get to a complete 100 ideas) because it pushed me away from what was predictable and into something I was more excited about
The second week where I was planning on polishing my concept didn’t go as well both due to health reasons (I experienced a migraine, the effects of which usually span over days for me) and technical issues (my laptop will not connect to my home WiFi and my Chromebook wouldn’t let me log onto figma). With these hiccups and my commitment to my other classes my final concept is not as polished as I would like and I didn’t get the chance to get as comfortable with figma as I would like. I did make an attempt at learning it as seen below, but I decided it was a better use of my time to make sure my presentation was finished.
Speaking of my presentation, I am not particularly happy with it. Although it is coherent and gives an overview of my plans for the project, it is very wordy and the design of it looks amateurish. I do think that some of the charts I had planed to make in figma would have alleviated some of the wordiness, however I think for the next project I should give myself a strict word limit and use templates in order to ensure my slides are succinct. I think the knowledge that they would not be in person tripped me up a little, because I couldn’t use the Pecha Kucha method to keep them to the point. If I were to re-do the project I would take advantage of the fact that I could submit a video and create a voice-over presentation rather than relying too heavily on text to get my ideas across.
Although I know I could have pushed myself to polish the project and add more design elements I think the self-awareness to know that this would negatively impact my health more than it would positively effect my grade is still a valuable skill. I am happy with my research and ideation process but I think my implementation and prototyping could definitely be improved. In the future I want to continue to push myself to learn figma, and if I am able to get my technical issues sorted, to work through the gamedev.tv lessons on Unreal I purchased in order to have a better understanding of how to prototype my concepts despite my difficulty with coding.