Road of Trials

For the past 6 weeks I have been working with a team of 4 to design a game for a client. Our client is a geology professor with the University and her goal was for us to design a game that could be used as a possible assessment of the learning comprehensions of her class. 

As a group we tackled this project with wide open minds. We met with the client right off the bat and immediately started brainstorming ideas for our game design. Overall we tried very hard to stay in constant communication and set goals and expectations for the design. Our first few weeks were very fluid as we tried to hammer out the actual design we wanted to achieve. We had several back to back zoom meetings to not only accomplish specific assignments, but continue the communication for our goals. As a team we really focused on the prototype and what we could/couldn't do with our abilities. 

On general reflection, I think our process and project has been successful. Our communication has been very strong and I think has added to our success. I think we did struggle a bit in the beginning really focusing on an accomplishable project, which could have ended very problematic for us. I can think of a true "failure" for project as a whole. Even with our limited development experience we were able to provide a decent working prototype. 

With all that said, I think if I (we) could start over, I would try to advocate for the idea that we need to be focusing on the design of the project more than the development. I think we did well on creating a design for the project, but the prototype assignment became a strong focus of the group and I think we spent a lot of time "perfecting" that. If we were starting over, I think I would really try to steer the focus on the overall design and not the individual parts so much. Understandably, I am not the only voice on the team, but I think having someone keep everyone on track leads to more success in a team environment. 

I think life is full of lessons, so saying I didn't really learn anything new is hard, but I have worked in a team environment before and a few of the assignments are very similar to not only work I do, but also past educational assignments I have had. I really enjoyed the storyboard section as that is something I have done in my undergrad course work. If anything, I learned the most from the assessment portion. That is where I am the weakest from, so having a team that could build that part for me to read and learn from was helpful.