Dissemination

Research Through Design - Post Documentation

Overall this has been quite the journey in learning how to approach Research through Design. In my last post I mainly focused on discussing how the process went and where I’ll be heading next. Since then I’ve gone through the journey of making a poster to communicate my design and really solidifying in a simple way the overall path that has led to the completion of Project Conversation: Robocat.

Below you can see an image of this poster:

Poster of Project Conversation

Diagram of Results from Research Journey

As you can see from above, in the end there were about three different key stages to my learning with the main results of this process being a final diagram showing how social generation systems can lead to the enhancement of believability for NPCs.

Since concluding with this project, Rae and I have begun another round of prototyping with the plan to actually do speed prototyping of three potential game ideas in order to create a foundation that we can later build upon that maintains at it’s core a fun and enjoyable experience for players. We plan to over our winter break complete each of these and reflect upon our findings. 

Already, we have completed our first of these prototypes with the creation of a Theater stage manager sim where you are directing NPCs in what tasks they should do as you all prepare for the upcoming performance of Wicked (to be changed to avoid trademark in later versions). Through this creation, I realized that my social simulation system will be made of both a core aspect and an adapter style supplemental layer that can be used to incorporate into other projects. This is because the main problem I was running into is that when you shift away from purely visual novel gameplay, the system needed to be able to adapt. Thus it revealed how social simulation systems, while having core underlying mechanics, will need to change to suit the gameplay style they are being incorporated into (in this case a management sim game).

Overall though, this has been a fun journey of making and I am curious to see where it leads next!