During the first week, Team Brake Point (née Project Let’s Drive!) settled into their roles and prepared for the semester ahead. The team set up their desks and computers (yay riveting). There was a pillar to deal with in the middle of the room. The team communicates around the pillar.
The team discussed what they thought the project would be like and what they were making. The brief project description was what the team knew on day 1:
“ARIN Intermediate Unit has operated a Driver’s Training program for a number of years; both theory and behind-the-wheel. The theory portion has been available in an online version, but does not include any interactive components. The goal of this project is to create stable, interactive content for part of ARIN’s program that “students” will find engaging. The ETC team is encouraged to explore different topics within the provided content that align more naturally towards unique mechanics such as driver distraction, dealing with adverse weather, or driving time restrictions. The online experience should be designed such that successful completion of it will be evidence of knowledge gained, and should be developed on easily adopted platforms such as, but not limited to, web and mobile.”
With this knowledge, the team set out to research more about who the client is and the design space ahead. The team did a lot of googling for driving simulators and games. They gathered questions to ask the client. And they set up a meeting with the client and project advisors.
The first meeting went well; it was a phone conference with James Wagner, the executive director of ARIN Intermediate Unit. James laid out their ultimate goal: to make a driving education game that engages students and teaches them to be good drivers. They want the game to prepare new drivers for their permit test and to make good decisions behind the wheel.
During week 2 the team set up a meeting at the ETC with two more people from ARIN, Greg and Denny. In person the team was able to ask them lots of questions related to driving education in PA. Greg and especially Denny are expert driver’s ed educators. They provided the team with vivid metaphors and examples of driving scenarios and common mistakes drivers make. The team learned that four tire spots each the size of a human hand is all the friction controlling a car.
During the first visit, Greg and Denny shared this hazard perception test from the UK:
The video shows a student clicking whenever they see a possible developing hazard on the roadway. They aren’t controlling the car, but they are practicing scanning the scene for potential hazards. A hazard is an encounter in which the driver has to make a quick decision in order to avoid crashing, such as another car running a stop sign, a pothole, or a jaywalker.
The hazard perception test helps drivers practice concentrating on a driving scene and predicting what will happen. There are many moving parts in a driving scene and the speed and mass of traveling cars makes them dangerous. If the driver isn’t constantly predicting possible outcomes they may not have enough time to react when a hazard appears. Greg and Denny told us a driver makes a decision every 4 seconds on average.
The team watched YouTube videos of distracted drivers and car accidents. There are many different scenarios in which a driver fails to predict hazards and loses control avoiding a crash or doesn’t have time to avoid a crash. The team saw speeding, weather, and failure to predict what other moving objects in the scene are doing as common causes of crashes.
This is one compilation of car accidents…
Here is a video of a crazy intersection in Africa where no one is crashing. This showed the team that carefully and constantly surveying and predicting the scene stops crashes from happening (if everyone on the road is abiding by the same behavior).
At this point the team knew there was a lot of material to cover and a lot of things that drivers do wrong. It was important to start narrowing what could be covered. It was important to narrow the target audience to teens in PA new to driving.
Week three the team continued to dig into the research and meet with professors for game design and scope advice. Dave brought the Transformational Framework to the teams attention. It’s a book developed at Schell Games by Sabrina Culyba and is a guide for making Transformational games. Dave helped the team realize that the game is trying to change player behavior in the real world. He brought the team through the book and helped the team ask the right questions.
From the Transformational Framework the team realized the goal of the game is to make teens better drivers to ultimately save lives. Motor vehicle accidents are the number one cause of death for 15-19 year olds. They are less experienced behind the wheel, and the complicated scenarios (e.g, weather, construction, aggressive drivers, distracted drivers, pedestrians, animals) that a driver faces takes years to gain experience. How can the team make a game that better prepares teens for the road?
There was a lot of material to choose from to put in the game, but the team had to consider scope, accessibility, client needs, programming load, art load, scalability, and educational richness.