Week 2: Towards Gamification

Week 13 (Feb 19th to 26th 2021)

Designers: Kate Chernysheva, Maria Shuttleworth, Qendresa Selimi and Tatiana Bohsali

Brief: Design a way for people to experience The Hoffman Centre collections.

Following last week’s feedback, we decided it was time to stop thinking and start making, or researching through design. During our first meeting, we selected our target audience to be high school students between 16 and 18 years old, interested to know more about the field. We figured that this age range would be adequate as these individuals would shape the future of air travel.

Design Fiction and Backcasting

Afterwards, we looked into backcasting and Cameron Tonkinwise’s view of speculative design (Fig 1). From this literature review I realized the increasing importance of the designer’s role, as we are speculating through making. Moreover, backcasting and looking at the past as a way forward serves as a strong theoretical framework. It would give our ideal perspectives a reasonable approach as we would be basing them on present obstacles.

Fig 1. Understanding the backcasting process. Credit: Maria — **Fig 1.** Understanding the backcasting process. *Credit: Maria*

Towards Gamification

Last week’s case studies, including the card game idea, led us to consider gamification as a potential design approach. Not only would it be a suitable direction for our target audience, but I thought it would also work as an alternative way to navigate through information. I considered it also as a playful way to engage with the topic, and grow interest in it .

Nevertheless, we all agreed that the outcome would not necessarily be a game, but more of a gamified platform based on subtle gamification criteria such as rewards, levels, or self-progression indicators. We consequently did some brainstorming (Fig 2) to understand these elements and how to work with them.

Fig 2. Understanding gamification. Credit: Everyone — **Fig 2.** Understanding gamification. *Credit: Everyone*

This direction sparked a lot of ideas for all of us, so we started creating user flows and storyboards for better visualization (Fig 3 and 4). I thought this was a good step as these storyboards would be used in the speed dating stage where we would seek external opinions.

Although interactive and functional, I though the storyboards above could potentially be too linear and directive, limiting freedom of exploration within the experience. Alternatively, I proposed a more subtle gamified option (Fig 5 and 6), that would also allow users to engage with the content and interact with each other. I got inspired from the flight radar website in order to create the following storyboard. I pictured a map composed of user cursors, flying documents and daily games. These icons would overlap diagrams of intersected themes, favorable for the navigation through the interconnected topics. I envisioned some gaming criteria to be applied through unlocking new content and leveling up.

Similarly, Maria envisioned another mapping direction by having a scrollable globe (Fig 7), in which clickable icons would lead you to a topic you would be interested in. It would become an expandable platform, the more topics you add.

Fig 5. Userflow of the idea I had in mind. Credit: Tatiana — **Fig 5.** Userflow of the idea I had in mind. *Credit: Tatiana*

Fig 6. Storyboard of the idea I had in mind. Credit: Tatiana — **Fig 6.** Storyboard of the idea I had in mind. *Credit: Tatiana*

Fig 7. Storyboard of Maria’s mapping idea. Credit: Maria — **Fig 7.** Storyboard of Maria’s mapping idea. *Credit: Maria*

Meeting With Applied Works

Additionally this week, we met with our partners from Applied Works as we had some questions and uncertainties about some decisions we had to take. In my opinion the meeting was relieving. We were worried about framing our designs within specific limits, but Tom and Callum seemed to welcome the ideas we brought forward, as they were seeking new perspectives through our work. Therefore, we were free to choose our own target audience, create our own visual micro-identity, and include new kinds of information related to the topic.

Feedback

Our presentation turned out to be quite rich and loaded. Nevertheless, our instructors pointed out that our ideas were very informational, and needed to be more experiential. Although the gamification ideas caught most people’s interest, we were advised to think more carefully for it to not turn out manipulative and exploitative.

Reflection

The feedback made me realize our ideas were much more exciting in our minds before they were communicated verbally. They are indeed informative, but I believe that being there are this stage of the project would be a good base before “making it weirder”. As I now have a better understanding of the brief, the next step would be to take a step back and open our eyes to different perspectives. Moreover, I think that next week should delve more into our target audience with some speed datings. This would help us acquire new perspectives, perhaps more experiential or physical.

References

Dunne, A. and Raby, F. (2014). Speculative Everything : Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Erscheinungsort Nicht Ermittelbar: Mit Press

Shannon, J., 2021. 8 Core Human Drives in Gamification. [online] Gamify.com. Available at: https://www.gamify.com/gamification-blog/8-core-human-drives-in-gamification-marketing-video

Tonkinwise, C. (2019). Creating visions of futures must involve thinking through the complexities. [online] Speculativeedu. 8 Jul. Available at: https://speculativeedu.eu/interview-cameron-tonkinwise/ [Accessed 21 Feb. 2021].

Zaidi, L., 2017. Building brave new worlds: Science fiction and transition design.