{"id":82,"date":"2016-04-19T18:21:40","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T18:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/?p=82"},"modified":"2016-04-19T18:21:40","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T18:21:40","slug":"week-11-a-brief-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/2016\/04\/19\/week-11-a-brief-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 11 – A Brief Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

So up through Week 10, our blog posts have been “Producer Reflections”. \u00a0This is because our client, the CMU Human Computer Interaction Institute, wanted specific information on our process and our thoughts about the project. \u00a0Hopefully this has been helpful to them, but now I’d like to take\u00a0some time to give a more general overview of our project and the work that we’ve done.<\/p>\n

The goal of the project was initially presented to us as creating a game that would change people’s beliefs about how people behave after a natural disaster, but\u00a0it turned out to be more complex than that. \u00a0More than a final, complete game, our client was interested in studying our process and techniques for making the game, as well as our findings around\u00a0using specific strategies for changing people’s beliefs. \u00a0Originally, we were presented with 4 belief change strategies: Cognitive Dissonance, Identification with Character, Reflection, and Metaphor. \u00a0Eventually, we settled on building our game around metaphor, but first we spent several weeks brainstorming ideas around all 4 strategies.<\/p>\n

\"SurThrive<\/p>\n

At the same time we were brainstorming, we were also doing research. \u00a0First, we began researching disasters, and specifically how people act after a disaster. \u00a0The HCI department provided us with some excellent reading material to get us started. \u00a0One book in particular, Rebecca Solnit’s “A Paradise Built in Hell” was very helpful, and served as the basis for our belief change goals. \u00a0Solnit provides research into the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the “disaster utopias” that have appeared when communities are brought together by\u00a0natural catastrophes. \u00a0She also\u00a0argues that people in positions of power view these sudden assemblies of people as a threat to\u00a0the existing order, and will often respond with\u00a0aggressive, reckless, and sometimes violent solutions. \u00a0It was\u00a0these facts and this belief that we wanted to communicate to our audience.<\/p>\n

\"SurThrive<\/a><\/p>\n

We also did a lot of additional research, watching documentaries, talking to experts, and even visiting the Johnstown Flood Museum. \u00a0Meanwhile, we were also doing research into metaphor, and techniques for getting our message across. \u00a0We found a few animations and games that our team all liked, and that we felt used metaphor in memorable and impactful ways. \u00a0We felt these would be useful techniques for creating an experience that our audience would remember, and hopefully want to share with their friends.<\/p>\n

\"Softs<\/a><\/p>\n

After brainstorming and researching, we settled on our final design: Pause. \u00a0The idea was to make a game disguised as a media player, where users would interact with our game using media player controls like play\/pause, rewind\/fast forward, and window dragging and resizing. \u00a0However, the controls wouldn’t work the way the player expected, leading to moments of\u00a0confusion, surprise, and hopefully reflection. \u00a0We designed “bowlhead” characters that would serve as abstractions for humanity, then began designing\u00a0metaphorical scenes with them. \u00a0While the scenes were vague and abstract, we believe that by putting them all together in the right order, players will\u00a0begin picking up on our message about disasters. \u00a0We’ve completed 10 scenes up to this point, and this weekend is playtest day, so it’s finally time to put our designs to the test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So up through Week 10, our blog posts have been “Producer Reflections”. \u00a0This is because our client, the CMU Human Computer Interaction Institute, wanted specific information on our process and our thoughts about the project. \u00a0Hopefully this has been helpful to them, but now I’d like to take\u00a0some time to give a more general overview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}