As expected, the break flew by and it’s back to classes. I admit that it feels very intimidating knowing that we’ve passed the halfway mark of the semester. Even though I am technically progressing as planned, there is a slight feeling of paranoia that I won’t achieve what I’m hoping to by the end of the project. Honestly I’m not sure how to deal with this feeling but I suppose I will be able to reflect on it with the benefit of hindsight once I’ve finished. 

On Monday, I managed to talk with Steve, the design technician, and get advice on how to proceed with prototyping. He was so, so helpful and gave me fantastic tips. Until now I had been stressing about different prototyping options and how much money I would have to spend. Steve’s input really helped me clarify my envisioned prototyping process and budget. 

During Tuesday's studio session, I was too slow to put my name down for a check in with Ayla. I emailed her after class asking if we could catch up over Zoom but she was understandably very busy and said we could talk during Monday's class. It was disappointing that I wasn’t able to check in with Ayla after a long two weeks away but it was completely my fault for being too slow. Next time I’ll be more onto it. 

On the bright side, I conducted some user testing during the studio session. I tested my paper prototype of the conversation starter cards.

It went really well and I gained really valuable insights to help me with iteration. For instance, we tried playing the game mode “If I were you” where you had to answer from the perspective of the person next to you. On some of the cards, the questions were too specific to answer from somebody else’s perspective. It helped me realise that if I wanted to include the “If I were you” game mode, I would probably have to specifically mark which cards are compatible with the game mode. Overall, my classmates liked the tool and appreciated the gamification of it.

I also got people to vote for their favourite card layout iteration. 

It was really interesting seeing what everyone liked and didn’t like. It definitely helped point me in the right direction. 

While I was in the prototyping mood, I decided to work on my third tool. So far, I have decided to include a set of conversation starter cards and the Value Pursuit Board (Value Pursuit | Prototype | PSS-101 | Project, n.d.). The conversation starters sparked knowledge sharing and the Value Pursuit Board helped the users understand the value everyone brought. For the third tool, I wanted to tackle a different area of co-design. I settled on something that helps users understand each other’s priorities and goals. To do this, I designed a tool called a Mahi board. I got the inspiration for "mahi" from the phrase "Do the mahi, get the treats". I wanted to capture the element of working and putting in the required effort to achieve favourable outcomes. Below is a screen capture of the gameplay instructions from my Miro board.

Since this is completely original and created by me, it’s critical for me to conduct user testing. In particular I’m not sure about the balance between the available mahi tokens and the allocated amount of mahi for each goal. I’m planning to test this tool in the next couple of weeks. I also need to confirm with Ayla if it is appropriate for me to use “mahi” as a measure of work and effort put in.

Overall, it was a successful week of prototyping and testing. Even though I did just as much work as the previous weeks, it felt more chill because it was really fun going through the ideating process. I do enjoy reading but I admit that I had had enough of secondary research after six weeks of it.

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REFERENCES

A screen capture of the gameplay instructions from my Miro board [Digital Image] (2023). https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVM1EOxvs=/?share_link_id=555568399592.

A screen capture of the layout votes from my Miro board [Digital Image] (2023). https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVM1EOxvs=/?share_link_id=555568399592.

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