This is our fourth week of studio 3 and we have had some major changes made to our design. It has been really important for us to get these design issues out of the way so that we can go forward with the prototype next week. Some of the things we did include;

• Made a storyboard for our documentation
• Did some more field research at the community garden
• Had our follow up client meeting

After going through our documentation and rough storyboards as a team, we made a more official storyboard in our documentation so we could get an idea of how each window would link to each other. For this I decided to use Google’s drawing feature so that we all had access to edit the drawings. Because our storyboard was still in its rough stage, it was important that we all had input to these drawings instead of a single person calling the shots.

As I mentioned in my last blog, we made plans to revisit the community gardens to get a more diverse range of tasks. This time we learned even more interesting facts about gardening and just how broad the topic is. As an example I was tasked with hanging up pine cones from the undercover area roof which serves as a habitat for ladybugs which help keep insects away from their crops. Other than just moving scrap and hay bails around, we spent most of the time removing some overgrown vines around a water tank.

Again this was a really productive use of our time and we also got to do some more diverse activities which even furthered our knowledge. Both of our field research times we spent most of the time doing a single in depth task. This is good because we learn a lot about these particular topics, but we don’t have the time to go in this much detail with each activity in our app. So next week we hope to get even more diverse tasks so we can get a taste of each area in gardening.

Last of all we had our follow up meeting with our client where we could show him our storyboard and fill him in on what we had done over the past 2 weeks. We did manage to get our vision across for the most part, but I feel that we didn’t really get across all of the work we had done. Overall it was a really good meeting and we got more info from him that we didn’t know about last meeting. We had assumed that we would be making the app from the ground up, but this time we found out that we were only designing a small section of a larger project which his team was making.

Our app will serve as a recall app that will help with memory retention similar to the apps memrise and duolingo. Even though we knew this before hand, we did not think to look into these similar mobile apps and learn from their educational format. Because of this we have had to make major changes to our overall storyboard and design. Though it hasn’t made our work up until now a waste, most of it is still relevant in this format.

Personally I have only used memrise in the past and have seen how they handle memory retention. Both of these example apps are for learning different languages, the way they teach is by showing the player the connections between the users native language and the new language they are learning. After this they will then quiz you on the same words and see how well you go. After this the app will have reminders of when the user should review the quizzes to make sure the knowledge is solidified. This below image shows that this user is due for review on this particular quiz, he has the choice to review the words or ignore them.

This is what our app will also do but instead of us teaching the students about biology, chemistry, horticulture, etc, we can assume that the students will be learning about these things in class (or on the main game made by the main team) and then our app will serve as recall through mini games and quizzes.

Moving forward we are again looking to do more field research at the community garden to get as much exposure to the practice as we can. We are also going to be updating all of our documentation as per our client meeting and also looking towards an updated storyboard. As per our milestones, we must have a prototype ready by the end of next week so we have a lot to do.

This is our third week of Studio 3 and we are researching topics that can help our design process and also brainstorming ideas for our project. We did some field research at a community garden just across the road from our university campus. This garden hosts a working bee multiple times a week where the community can come in to get their hands dirty and learn about gardening. Going into this working bee I wanted to learn about the overall experience and how we could translate that into our app.

We ended up digging a trench around the inside of a greenhouse to put up chicken wire to keep out pests. When nearing completion we found that it may not be the best solution for the problem because rats and still chew threw or climb over. The organisers for the working bee came up with the solution to use chilli spray to keep the pests out.

This sort of creative thinking made me realise how broad and flexible gardening can be. We were thinking of processes and systems that practitioners use that we could teach students, but practitioners use creative problem solving to ensure they have a solution for every environment and problem. Of course there are still processes that can make their work easier, but they still need to be flexible enough to be applied to many different situations. In order to make an educational app for gardening, we would need to teach everything about biology, chemistry, horticulture, agriculture, etc. But obviously we don’t have those qualifications or time so we needed a compromise.

Our client said that he wanted us to focus on recall activities through mini games, so we can assume that he doesn’t expect us to pack this much information in this app. We can also assume that these students will be learning these things in class and this app needs to ensure this information is recalled when needed through mini games. This is something we need to brainstorm on as a team since it could change our game drastically.

Overall I think this was a really productive use of our time, we were able to get a taste of the overall experience as well as smaller details that we hadn’t even considered before hand. We didn’t get to do the most varied of tasks so we do plan on going again to get a more diverse range of tasks.

After our field research we did some storyboards to get an idea of what our app might look like and how it would function. For the most part we all have similar ideas but we still needed to iterate on them so that we could take them from 50 odd sticky notes and put them on our documentation. Next week we hope to return to the working bee to get some more experience and also iterate on our storyboards and other documentation before then.

Last lesson we had our initial client meeting for our augmented reality (AR) school garden project and we were able to get a solid idea of what the client wants and why. Going into the meeting we only had the information “AR school garden game” which was really vague and made it difficult for us to research the required information. I made a blog covering this research that you can find here. For this meeting our team would be the interviewers, because of that we made our best effort to dress well and make our environment perfect for the client. For future reference we recorded the entire interview on a smart phone and we all took notes.

Most of our questions were answered on the uncorrupted version question which for us was “What exactly would you like us to make?”. Our client obviously had planned out what he was going to say and how he would explain it to us. Because of this we needed to put our previous research to work and make sure we could come up with valuable questions. Because our team is behind due to the meeting schedule, we didn’t want to get left behind in terms of information. If we had gone in and only asked the questions that we had at the time, we would have missed out on about 50% of the information we actually got.

We have found from this meeting that the application will be a serious game made for students between the grades of kindergarten and grade 12. The game will have a primary focus on education by using different learning techniques such as education theory. Because we have such a large age bracket to work with, and the games design can vary a lot given this range, we will need to come up with a method to either target the entire audience with different age brackets or just focus on a single age group. This project has the potential to be apart of students curriculum which is actually a bit nerve racking given the stakes.

For the AR part of the meeting we found that the purpose of using AR technology was to utilize the AR tag functionality which allows the users to scan tags that can call different actions in the app. In this games case the tags can prompt a particular minigame with respect to its location (eg. a minigame about saving water could be found at a tap). As for using the augmented reality and tracking space in order to place objects and such, he was pretty vague about it and it doesn’t seem to be his main focus. Mainly because there are constraints that limit its usability such as when it is raining or no access to some tags.

Because the game is aimed at children we are looking to make a more lighthearted and child friendly art style but also focusing on the realism of gardening practice. There will be a protagonist character that will be the players main source of guidance and information. We were informed by our client that children like to look up to older characters because that’s what they aim to be, because of this we are making the protagonist about 2 – 3 years older than the user.

Some of the topics to research after gathering all this information is pretty diverse. It is important to us to research these points because it will ensure our game is ethical and accurate with its information. Firstly our game will be part of a school curriculum and because of this their progress and data needs to be tracked for the teachers to grade them. We need to make sure that it is legal to track the information we need because it could be a big no-no. We have already been researching AR technology, but our client could have his vision of the app work with just QR codes. To ensure that the client can get the most out of AR technology and make the game more engaging for the children, we need to research further into AR to find out ways we can use it effectively for our design. Again with mobile development, we have already been looking into it but there are so many methods and opportunities for the mobile platform that could help us a lot.

Our client mentioned to us some new terms; design justification and design validation. On the surface it was easy enough to understand but just in case I think it’s worthwhile to follow up on this and make sure we understand exactly what he means by it. Another issue is that these AR tags will be spread out around a school campus and will need to have a lot of thought into how the pathing will work. We don’t have access to the particular school we will be testing this on, so for now getting some sample school site maps and creating a test path for our game is a good start.

The plan from here is primarily research and brainstorming. We already have some ideas floating around but we need to keep throwing ideas into the blender before we can get a clear vision that the team agrees on that we can then pitch to the client.

This is the first week of Studio 3 where we are looking at commercialisation of video games so that we can better understand how to make money via game development. Throughout the trimester we will be creating an application for a business with a focus on fixing a problem or making a difference in a specific subject. My group is designing an augmented reality mobile game about school gardens, the rest is unclear. Since finding out this snippet of information our group has been researching about AR technology, mobile development, school gardens and existing educational games so that we will have refined and accurate decisions when it comes to the client interview. We have also looked into our client to find out what type of products they create and any methods they like to have consistent throughout their products.

Because we have been tasked with making an AR game about school gardens we can assume the target audience will range from primary school to high school. The polar opposites of this range make for completely different products. For the primary school we could hone in on the game elements and make a game about taking care of a virtual plant they can place in their surroundings. On the other end, for the high school we could make a game that displays the inner workings of a plant and give encyclopedia level information to focus on the education elements.

So while we may be a bit hung up on this one missing piece of information, we have had to make sure that we have sufficient information in all the other areas so that we aren’t left behind after the first interview. Making sure that once we find out who our target audience is, we can follow up with questions exclusive to that audience and make sure that we get the most out of our first client interaction.

We have also been looking at existing AR apps and educational games that can help fill in the gaps with the information we have. Here are some examples of the games/apps we looked at that fit in with what the team had in mind for the project. The first is called Prelimb (Prelimb, 2015) and is an augmented reality game where the user can place 3D plants in their garden so they can better decide what they want in their garden. While it does use AR technology in a productive way, the use of the app is very limited and users may only find themselves using it one time. This function of placing plants in an augmented space is what most of the team members have in mind for the product, but that depends on the audience.

The next app is called Anatomy 4D (DAQRI, 2015) which uses an AR tag to display a 3D anatomy model that allows the user to select specific parts and organs of the human body. This app proves a really good strength of augmented reality by emphasising visualisation for education rather than relying too much on text for education. This is very useful to know because we can take full advantage of this strength and make the game more engaging.

An educational game that we found which is called Barefoot World Atlas (Amphio Limited, 2016) and allows the player to observe the earth from a top down view and select landmarks and points of interest around the world which displays information and flavour text about the selected location. This is a really good example of the amount of flavour text and information needed for a primary school student. The game features really satisfying animations and a unique art style. Simply rotating the world around and seeing all the little icons sparks a sense of wonder and encourages the player to look at them without explicitly telling them to. This balance of education elements and interesting visuals is what I’m expecting our client to ask for.

These example games are very different and appeal to different audiences. They also apply existing knowledge and ideas into their own design. Our client company aims to be the early adopters and early majority of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (Rogers, 1962) and because of this we can be sure that our client will want a product that applies existing early concepts into a unique design and not have to worry about reinventing the wheel.

Bibliography

Prelimb. (2015). Prelimb. Retrieved from http://prelimb.com/

DAQRI. (2015). Anatomy 4D. Retrieved from http://anatomy4d.daqri.com/

Amphio Limited. (2016). Barefoot World Atlas. Retrieved from  http://barefootworldatlas.com/

Rogers, E. (1962). Technology Adoption Life Cycle. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle