Today was another useful session. As there weren’t many groups in class today, Ben was able to spend a good amount of time with our group and provide feedback, as well as a direction. He was great help today - prompting us to think about other methods of conducting the activity, and look into various mechanics (cards, dice, spinner, etc.). He also tried out our first playtest and provided feedback, which we used to help us iterate the idea.
Is it important to answer all the questions?
Should the questions explain the categories?
Is there a way to prompt the users to go to other questions? (another mechanic that leads them to other parts of the Influence, so they get to the important / juicy questions)
How can we create a system to push the conversation along?
How can we explain the Influences without Shaun’s example? (numbered cards that explain the decision-making process and the 6 influences in an coherent manner.)
Look at ‘flavour text,’ ‘prompts,’ ‘tutorial cards.’
Next, we decided on the questions to ask Rebecca and Shaun for our meeting on Wednesday. We were a little confused about how the activity would plan out, so we needed a better understanding of the research behind the workshop. I think these question are enough for a start, because I’m pretty sure we would ask them more about the topic as we converse.
So, we decided to ask them about:
What was the research you based the decision-making workshop off?
Can you please explain the frameworks of the Influences worksheet?
Is the worksheet what you expect people to ‘use’ to help them make decisions?
What made you decide on everyone having their own personal future decision, instead of one decision for everyone to work on?
Why did you choose the six ‘words’ for the Influences? Why THOSE words in particular?
What is the purpose of the card ice breaker exercise, does it have to be this?
Why did you choose others to introduce us, not ourselves?
What is the maximum time you could extend the workshop to?
Could we run a more developed playtest with the students with Wiser’s help?
We then continued the conversation about the playtest. Regarding the “questions” for each of the six influences, Talia had an idea to have 3 separate dice, which would gradually increase the ‘level of difficulty’ of the questions. However, thinking about that brought up a few issues regarding the creation of the dice, as well as the progression of the activity. So, we thought about adding new mechanics into the activity, as Ben suggested. To create a decent flow and engagement within the participants, we decided to divide the process into three parts - ‘Before’ and ‘After’ questions and ‘Group’ discussion. This way, there will be time for reflection and discussion for each person.
In Studio, we developed the activity and worked on the questions for the Influences. While doing this, Carol brought up an issue about the “Before” questions being somewhat similar to “After” questions, just with a change of the tense. I totally agreed with her point, because we don’t want to repeat the aspects of the activity. It would get boring and repetitive. Instead, we want the users to understand their decision making process and know what actions they will take in the future.
So, we thought that playtesting the first idea with a group of people could present us with useful feedback and solutions to our concept. We gathered a few students from around Studio and ran the playtest like Talia did on Monday. I think this was very useful because we did learn from the users and understood their feedback about what could be improved. It was also useful to observe the participants’ actions throughout the playtest as it proved how well the activity ran.
Observations of the Playtest:
Need a structure or some sort of a system to decide how the users participate, and who starts / goes next.
Need the participants to share their past decision with the group to get the context behind their answers.
Need better questions that share a common ground with the Influence - some questions are not relevant to the participant’s decision.
Need a way of avoiding repeated questions - keep a track record.
Need a way to encourage discussion between the participants, not move on after answering the single question - depends on ice breakers, different personalities.
Need the users to facilitate the activity / discussion, not just talk to us.
Having a ‘Dice’ is a good idea - makes you think about the decision making influences, a good starting point, however it does get boring after a while.
Should give participants enough time to think of a relevant decision, not something small.
Questions are interesting - need rephrasing to link to each influence, but it is implied that they can’t change the question if they land on it twice (how can we change that?).
The Influences are straightforward - questions need to reflect / communicate the meaning of it.
I believe that we are heading down the right track. We have a few ideas for iteration, which we will work on during our Thursday meeting. The playtests have been very useful for our progress, and we will continue to develop the idea to meet the brief.
Plan for the next Playtest - better facilitation and organisation, write questions on cards, reword questions to relate to each Influence, ‘sentence starter’ cards for “After” questions, introduce a timer for certain questions.
Work on the Presentation Slides and prepare to video.
Look at implied rules of “Cards” and “Dice” mechanics.
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