Week 3: February 4, 2022 – 1/4 walkarounds

This week our project teams had the 1/4 walkarounds where we present to the faculties of the program our project client, goals, and the plan to our steps to the final deliverable.

The project description
“The game should be multiplayer play as an individual or on a team. The game should be based in environmental fact and research, yet inspire users to learn more and take action in local communities.”

We proposed 2 environmental topics as our focus in the presentation.

  1. Biodegradable pods for burial

  • Biodegradable pods for dead bodies that can be used as compost for growing trees.
  • https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/03/world/eco-solutions-capsula-mundi/index.html
  • Change
    •  Encouraging the audience to deviate from conventional burials and invest for a more eco-friendly burials.
  • Barriers 
    • Religious practices and beliefs (Ex. Judaism, Islam)
    • People don’t talk/think about death or the preparation of death (Ex. a new concept of graveyards)

2.Thrifting, Fabric Efficiency

  • Why? 
    • Fabric waste is one of the biggest contributors to air and water pollution.
  • Change
    • Change how people buy and recycling clothes. 
  • Barriers 
    • People do not know how to recycle fabric
    • Trend and fast fashion (Ex.Zara) 
    • Access to high quality clothes (Ex.Patagonia)

Our thoughts on platform/technology were as listed below :

  • Thinking technologies and platforms as the means to deliver our transformational experience to fulfill two goals: Bridge Connections and Foster Sense of Community.

  • Multiplayer experience will be a good way to achieve these two goals, either asynchronous or synchronous.
  • Here are the useful feedbacks that we took note of from the faculties during the walkarounds:

    – Strongly encourage app to run in web browser on phone vs ios or android store,
    – Find out what we need (Mobile HTML5 compatibility on iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Firefox OS and other mobile devices)
    – Be sure to be in constant communication with the client; get tests to them as soon as possible.
    – Anticipate things that can go wrong with tech in regards to the conference; test stuff early!
    – Thinking about game mechanics in tandem with the topic.
    – Providing options for someone who already has environmental awareness with?
    – Go with something that’s more immediate to everyone’s lives.
    – Hard to get people to connect with things on a bigger level; people can make a change during lunch, while they’re shopping, etc
    -Textiles appeals to a much larger audience and has less specific and challenging barriers.
    -If we can get it working on WebGL rather than working on iOS it will be more accessible and to test without dealing with the issues around iOS licensing.
    – The goal of having people change is very hard! (get to know what they(attendees) don’t know about)(they might know more in depth about the environmental issues we mentioned)

    After talking with Raul later that week during the client meeting (2/4), we decided to move on with fabric efficiency and thrifting as our main environmental topic.