Hello!
This week was our 1/4s presentation with the ETC faculty. For our presentation, we prepared two main collections/displays to show our information.
The first is a slideshow we talked over briefly at the beginning of the presentation (and which is embedded directly below this).
The second was our whiteboard which showcased a variety of art inspirations, racial bias examples/explanations, and storyboards.
We were able to split the feedback into a few different categories.
Category 1: Character Design
We went into our presentation with the idea that the characters in our game world would anthropomorphic animals. We could use the animals to set up situations involving racial bias, without the issues being immediately and directly addressed.
The faculty (in general) did not feel that the animals would work as intended and cautioned us from moving in that direction. Some faculty liked the idea of the animals but we are definitely looking to do some testing with our audience about what appeals to them.
Category 2: Racial vs Gender Bias
Another sticking point that we were somewhat surprised we had to discuss was whether or not our project was touching on gender bias. Our explicit goals based on the seeding paper and the client’s wants are to look directly at racial bias and not gender bias or bias as a whole. Gender bias may confound some of the findings/certain behaviors may be not strictly related to racial bias but again for the explicit goals of the project, we will just be addressing racial bias.
Category 3: Transformation
The last main category of feedback was surrounding the transformation/informational nature of our project. After talking with our client, we received more clarity about what our project is intended to do, which is: be more effective than a control group at helping 8th graders identify racial bias and create/maintain strategies for overcoming racial bias. Both the control and our experimental group will be attending a racial bias workshop and our game should aid in the transformation, not be the sole source of it.
Conclusions
Overall, we found 1/4s to be a mixed bag. Getting the feedback was overall beneficial, but we don’t necessarily feel the feedback gave us clarity for our specific audience and the faculty seemed fixated on aspects that will likely exist outside of our project. In general, it did encourage us to seek more clarity in regards to the shape of the project and talking with our client has been especially helpful in this regard.
Thanks for reading,
James from STEMspire