Hello Again!

Welcome back to the Intertwined blog! We’re on our second week of work and making good progress on brainstorming and working on getting everything set up!

Playtesting Workshop

On Monday morning we had our playtesting meeting. The composition box we presented looked like this:

We received a lot of helpful feedback at the workshop. Some of the comments that stood out to us the most were:

• How do you move past surface level interactivity?
• Having guests share personal stories is interesting
• How do you get guests to share personal experiences?
• How do you pull a highly interactive experience with naive guests?

Client Meeting

On Monday, Stephan visited our project room in the ETC for our first weekly client meeting. We shared our brainstorming chart with him as well as some of the ideas the chart inspired. He liked our concept of “the average person”, where the guest would try and fit into the mold of an average person, to realize at the end that there is no average person. We also kept in mind his interest in the concept of intersectionality and attempted to weave it into our project. We suggested the idea that was based on the playground-game of telephone. Once we mentioned this idea Stephan immediately imagined a real, landline-style telephone as the vehicle of interaction for the experience. We latched onto this idea, seeing the possibilities of an intimate experience using the telephone as an input device and began working on developing it further.

Telephone Concept

Through multiple days of brainstorming, we have expanded on the telephone concept, in addition to considering other concepts. The main idea for our telephone concept would be that it is a safe space to share what guests feel, useing specific questions as prompts, and hear what other people have left behind. Although not fully developed, the general guest experience would follow this format:

Step 1: Enter

The guest would enter the space. There might be a sequence that explains the role of the guest, or they might be prompted to pick up the phone because it is ringing, etc.

Step 2: Demographics

The guest is asked to fill out a (potentially simplified) version of the identity wheel for themselves through the telephone.

Step 3: Self Expression

The guest would then be asked a question, and given a chance to answer. Both the identity wheel and the answer are recorded and saved in a database.

Step 4: Another Perspective

They are then given the identity wheel of a previous guest, and asked to answer the same question from the perspective of that person’s identity. 

Step 5: A Voice from the Past

After the guests answer, they hear the previous guest’s question and are encouraged to reflect on how close their answer was to the response by the person of that social identity.

Step 6: Hear More (Optional)

After the experience, the guest is given access to a “phonebook”, which is the database that they can use to listen to other recordings.

Faculty Feedback

On Wednesday we had meetings with several ETC faculty members and got lots of feedback. There was a lot of interest about the sharing idea but mixed reactions about the phone. The main concern we got was that we needed some sort of visuals to keep the guests engaged. This was something that was intended from the beginning, but we are still brainstorming what the visuals will look like.

Conclusion

We feel that we have made a lot of progress this week, but obviously there is still a long way to go! Next week we hope to begin playtesting the concept and questions that the guests will be asked, and we look forward to faculty feedback on Wednesday for Quarters.

See y’all next week!