“The vision is good enough. Now make the installation happen.”
This was Halves week, the mid-semester milestone where we stand in front of faculty and present everything: where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going. If Quarters was about proving we understood the problem, Halves was about proving we could solve it.
And the reception was better than we expected. Faculty felt the delivery and product quality were meeting or exceeding expectations. The core vision landed clearly: use AI and real-time conversation to get audiences to care about Joseph Priestley, onboard them quickly, and walk away thinking “that guy is actually pretty cool.” That validation felt great.
But the most useful feedback wasn’t about what we’d done. It was about what comes next. The critics zeroed in on two big questions: How are we going to make this installation actually happen in a real library? And once it’s there, how does it get maintained without our team around to babysit it?
These are the unsexy but critical questions that separate a class project from a real product. Can a librarian reset the system after a crash? What happens when the bladder prop wears out? How do you update Priestley’s dialogue without a programmer on call? We don’t have all the answers yet, but the fact that faculty is pushing us on these questions means they believe the experience itself is strong enough to actually ship.
On the production side, physical props work kicked into gear this week. We started sourcing materials, figuring out bladder maintenance (not a sentence you write every day), confirming screen options, and coordinating hardware orders. We also began planning Playtest Day logistics and sent out client updates on our progress.
The project is crossing the line from “cool demo” to “real thing that needs to survive in the wild.” And that shift changes how you think about everything.
Link to media and material files from the Week: