Week 8 took place right after spring break and coincided with several of our teammates attending the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. As a result, team availability was limited, and much of the week’s progress was maintained through a smaller working group.
During this time, our producer, Min, played a key role in keeping the project moving forward by coordinating tasks and ensuring continuity despite the reduced bandwidth. While collaboration was lighter than usual, this week became an opportunity to focus on stabilizing and pushing forward critical components of the project.
Prototype Milestone: Version 1 & 2
The most significant achievement this week was the completion of both Version 1 and Version 2 of our game prototypes.
These prototypes represent an important transition from early conceptual ideas into more structured, interactive experiences. Compared to earlier iterations, the gameplay flow is now clearer, and core interactions are more defined. Each version explores slightly different approaches to how players engage with the game, setting the foundation for upcoming evaluation and comparison.
Reaching this milestone gives us a concrete artifact to test, iterate on, and refine based on real user behavior.
Preparing for Playtesting
With two working prototypes ready, our focus shifted toward preparing for playtesting at the CMU Children’s School. This involved aligning schedules, confirming logistics, and ensuring that the prototypes are stable enough for use with children. Moving into playtesting marks a critical step for the project, as it allows us to observe how our intended design translates into actual user interaction. This phase will help us validate assumptions, uncover usability issues, and gather insights that are difficult to predict during internal development.
IRB Approval & Research Readiness
Alongside development progress, we also reached an important milestone on the research side. Our team has received IRB approval for conducting playtesting and acdemic paper writing, and all members have successfully completed the required CITI training in social and behavioral research ethics.
This ensures that our upcoming sessions with children are conducted responsibly and ethically, following institutional guidelines. With these requirements completed, we are now fully prepared to move forward with structured data collection during playtesting.
Reflection
Although Week 8 did not involve full team participation, it served as a crucial bridge between development and evaluation.
We moved from building in isolation to preparing for real-world testing, which represents a shift in how we approach design decisions going forward. With prototypes completed and playtesting on the horizon, the next phase of the project will be driven more directly by user feedback and observation.
