Design – AIM

By christineyan May 14th, 2018

Sprint 4: Working out prototypes

Week 1

Burak improves the Aim website while Rizal tinkers with the NFC Tags that Tamara got for us.

Christine puts together a workshop with around 10 students from an ICT Fontys university in Tilburg. She presents there on Wednesday while Burak makes notes about the answers of the focus group. The following structure is used:

-Check-in and energizer (Hello Kitty). It helps with loosening up the group and starting off fresh.

-Dark side from the Design method toolkit of DSS with the question “how would you make your event experience as bad as possible” and make the focus group solve their answers.

-Presentation explaining about our project and our prototypes. We intentionally don’t explain much about our project beforehand, so the focus group can be as creative as possible when working with the dark side. We ask them about their thoughts on the prototypes: what could be better, what is already good, what are your recommendations?

Using the DSS toolkit for the focus group

Some interesting findings from the focus group are about how it agrees with the answers to the questionnaire we previously sent out. For example, much like regular professional sports, people aren’t interested in going to an event if their team isn’t playing. And a lot of them are not aware of all the side events happening during an esports event and are thus not interested in going.

We also met up with Wouter from eMense to see if there were any near events happening that we could attend and test our working prototype on, but sadly the closest event would be in the summer. Wouter did provide us with pictures of the Bright Day Winter finals of which we could understand the kind of aesthetics and mood such an event has.

Hackathon

In the weekend there’s an Hackathon that’s put together by our coach Evelien. Burak, Rizal and Casper participate.

A total of about 12 people attend this event. Early in the morning Wouter starts with an introduction about the DSS and the ‘meer profijt uit data’ project, and how it is connected to the hackathon. Right after, Rutger continues with an introduction on the hackathon, and the teams introduce themselves to each other.

The goal of the Hackathon is to come up with a way of interaction which we can implement in the Bulbagarden stream that takes place in these two days (provided by Martijn, Dylan and friends). The ‘research’ questions provided are:

There is too much happening in the chat, how to keep a good overview?
I don’t know who is watching my stream, what are their interests?
What would my viewers like to see?
How much do my viewers know about the game?

Based on these questions, each team creates a prototype which they have to pitch on sunday. Each prototype differs a lot from each other, which shows that there can be many ways of interacting during a livestream.

Burak wins the Hackathon with his team! They made an application with smart click map technology where you can see how many times each button has been pushed:

http://www.team-aim.nl/twitch/extension/viewer.html#

Scribbles

Week 2

We have a meeting with Jeroen on Monday morning to talk about their WinView techniques and get feedback on our prototypes. Ronald from ExMachina who was also a judge during the Hackathon joins for the meeting as he will be working together with us. We decide to elaborate on the web application of the prediction app for this sprint, as the focus group of the first week and the results from the questionnaire indicate that this kind of app would seem like the most fun one for gamers.

We have an improv workshop on Tuesday with Jim and Willy. They want to bring more fun into workspaces and create a positive environment for the people working, which in turn makes people more productive. It gives the MediaLAB team the much needed lightness and distraction and provides us with new energy.

On Wednesday we have a translate session with Evelien and Felipe. Evelien reminds us on the values of the whole project, and that we should keep the purpose of the concept in mind throughout our whole prototyping process. Felipe also gives us a lot of useful suggestions and feedback. For the rest of the week, we brainstorm together on how to improve and change the concept of the prediction app and make prototypes out of them. We take entertainment as the main purpose of the app, which we divide in the following categories:

Interactive
Online community
Offline community
Before, during and after
(friendly) Competitiveness

We work with paper wireframes afterwards to go through the concept step by step again. A lot of options are proposed, but sadly, a lot of darlings had to be killed too 🙁

These wireframes were really useful for helping us getting back on track

Week 3

Casper can sadly only work parttime on the project from now on and Rizal has a (small) traffic accident, so sadly this week we came two people short. However, as the concept has already been worked out, the only important thing that needs to be done now is for Burak to visualize the prediction app digitally on Sketch. We have some useful peer feedback on Wednesday, and have the sprint review with our stakeholders on Thursday in the ArenA again. All the stakeholders have useful tips and feedback to help us:

ExMachina: Ronald from ExMachina attends the sprint review this time. We can arrange a meeting with ExMachina in the next sprint to talk more in detail about their WinView app, which inspired our prediction prototype in the first place.

RSNewMedia: Robbert proposes a collaboration between the prediction app and OnLive, which enables the prediction app to eliminate a few steps for the event attendees to go through when they make their teams. Because OnLive is location-based, when attendees walk into the area, teams could be automatically formed.

eMense: Wouter tells about the three esports games eMense is going to host in the ArenA this year: League of Legends, Cs:GO and Rocket League. He says eMense might be able to have one of their streamers come for the final expo.

And so we enter our second to final sprint. Lots of ideas, lots of potential to work with!

By christineyan April 13th, 2018

Sprint 3: Getting out there

Kicking the sprint off with a hero

Week 1

We have guests! Two experts from the design faculty of Politecnico di Torino in Italy, Fabrizio Valpreda and Paolo Tamborrini. They are going to guide us this week in a mini sprint.

The first day, they introduce us to their design faculty. They tell us about the projects they have worked on and the way they work. It is then time for us to start working with their method of getting to know the problem. We need to do a holistic research on esport events that have passed and explore everything about and around them: the width, location, nearby facilities, visitors etc.

The very first problem we already stumble upon is the fact that we don’t have any hands-on experience; Rizal has attended a few esport events before MediaLAB started, but since the start of our project, nobody has attended one. However, we are currently planning an event to be held at the MediaLAB building. It’s not quite the same, but it’s a nice alternative.

Joao from team Synergy made an inspirational drawing

Fabrizio and Paolo still advise us to do some research on other events such as the recent ESL One event held at Katowice in November. Rizal and Burak each made their own customer journey map based on personal experience.

We have another collective meeting with Fabrizio and Paolo and decide that Rizal’s customer journey map should be elaborated on.

The customer journey map is also part of DDS’ Design Method Toolkit!

In the evening, team Aim pays another visit to Esports Game Arena. They have an esport event of the currently popular shooter game Fortnite going on where everyone could sign up for. Rizal, Burak and Casper (and tag-along Lisa from team H&T) participate in the game. Christine meanwhile sits on the sideline sipping on wine and observing the attendees.

Thank you Rizal for always driving us to far places!

We got 3rd place in the end! Out of 5..

The next morning, we make a presentation based on the following guidelines:

Slide 1: team introduction

Slide 2: analysis of the scenario/project

Slide 3: analysis on the involved tools and users

Slide 4: case studies

Slide 5: ingredients: which kind of users and what parts will we work on?

Slide 6: summary of our ideas and concepts

All the teams gather for one final meeting with Fabrizio and Paolo to show the end results

From this minisprint we looked at our problem from a different perspective and got a nice customer experience map out of it. We also learned some new methods from Fabrizio and Paolo. We are thankful for this opportunity!

Week 2

The whole group gathers around and starts brainstorming for concepts this week. We spend a whole day going back and forth with ideas and decide to work out the best ones.

We meet up with Robbert to talk about the developments around OnLive. We also tell him about our progress and he helps us with brainstorming and shares some thoughts on our newly made concepts.

Tamara joins us for the translate session together with Evelien and Wouter. We present 5 concepts. It is recommended to us that we assess all the strong points from these concepts and see how those can strengthen each other.

Watch out for the Underpants Gnomes

Week 3

We merge a few ideas together and end up with 3 big concepts. We make prototypes for them and present them in the sprint review on Thursday in the Amsterdam ArenA, now officially called the Johan Cruijff ArenA. Zlatina, a teaching method developer joins us for today to see how a sprint review at MediaLAB works so she can take that into account when she helps MediaLAB turn into DSS.

Freek shows us around the ArenA afterwards. Pretty cool!

A summary of the sprint review:

For today’s presentation, team Aim talked about what they did for this sprint. They created visual User Experience maps for the online and offline audience during the before, during and after experience of an esport event based on face-to-face interviews and personal experience. A few results of the questionnaire were used as base for the concepts Aim has elaborated upon. Three final concepts were presented together with their prototypes, which will be described shortly:

-Predicting Game
42% of the answers on the questionnaires indicated that they wouldn’t go to an event because it might be boring. They want to participate in games themselves too during such an event. This concept is similar to ExMachina’s WinView, where you can predict which esports team might win and earn points that way. At the end of the event, you can exchange those points for goods.

-NFC Tags
Poles are placed in the event area that the attendees can interact with with a card they receive upon arriving at the event. It depends heavily on the venue and might be expensive. Freek gave the suggestion of making it a digital kind of NFC Tag that is AR-based.

-Smart Click Map game
Like the game ‘petje op, petje af’, attendees at the event get asked questions like ‘do you prefer dogs or cats?’ and should go to either the left or the right side accordingly. This is livestreamed on Twitch so the online players can also participate with their computer mice. The attendees at the event can then in turn see on a big screen what the online audience thinks.
Aim’s prototype: http://www.team-aim.nl/play/

All of the concepts contain in some way or another the following points:
-Online/offline interaction
-Community forming
-Data Driven

If you are interested in a specific concept, please let team Aim now and they will provide a more elaborate description.

One of the problems Freek noticed about the concepts were that the before and after experience surrounding the event weren’t incorporated as much and didn’t benefit the whole event journey of the customer. Robbert noted that the concepts weren’t esports specific, while that’s an area full of potential. It’s a very specific community that comes together and Aim should look more into the needs of those users and their specific mindset.

So for the next sprint, Aim needs to take those points into account when they work their concepts out. A focus group will be held where the specific mindset of esports-interested gamers will be analysed further. They also should start thinking of what kinds of data they would want to collect in their concepts for the data driven loop. Team Aim is also going to work on improving and prototyping their concepts. They want to arrange a meeting with Wouter from eMense to learn more about event planning, as Aim wants to plan their own event. They also want to meet up with Jeroen or Bastiaan from ExMachina to discuss their WinView and Smart Click Map information and technology.

By aim February 6th, 2018

Test sprint: getting settled

After a few days of fun cooking challenges and getting to know each other better, it is time to finally start working as a team.

Aim pretending to play games

On Monday we start with a SCREAM workshop, getting better acquainted with the structure and ideals MediaLAB works with. This is also the first time we are tested as a team, having to find the most efficient way to work together and blow and tie up as much balloons as possible. We have a few setbacks in the beginning but managed to find a slick system at the final round. I hope this will also be the case for our future projects; having ups and downs but being able to learn from them and make something great with it in the end.

Goodbye team building

Tuesday: Brainstorming and Getting Acquainted with MakersLab

On Tuesday we begin on a test-sprint that will last until Friday. We have to work with the following question:

“How can we empower children with disabilities so they can have clear and customized representation in the toys they play with in a sustainable manner?”

It’s a pretty challenging topic, so immediately we get stuck while brainstorming; we have a hard time “falling in love with the question” and keep straying away from its key points. What group the we want to appeal to? Will it be for children with disabilities themselves or will it be to make other groups of people more conscious on the topic? How will it be sustainable? All the while keeping in mind how to keep our ‘product’ ethically conscious. We decide to go with a board game incorporating a few physical disabilities. A few concepts are made based on that idea, and Casper makes the designs on Illustrator. We then head to the MakersLab to put our ideas into practice.

We have to make all the objects from scratch

Making our board with the laser cutter

Wednesday: Finding Test-groups and Rethinking Ideas

Today we need to find test groups to test out our ‘prototype’. We go for the HvA students as we don’t have any other quick options at the moment. We manage to find two groups of four, and they enjoy playing the game. There are a few things that we have to change though:

-Make better and clearer tasks for the card, right now the players still need a lot of guidance from us while playing the game

-Make the board a bit more clear, people get confused about the direction they have to go in on the board.

-More physical tasks that really confront the player with the physical disability

Cutting a circle with one hand, one of the tasks in the board game

We regroup in de studio and start thinking about ways to use the data we gathered from the test groups for a new prototype. We get a bit stuck because we want to appeal to a large group while still being able to empower the children with disabilities themselves. In the end Rizal proposes a slight remake of the famous but simple mind game ‘ tower of Hanoi’. For this game we want to go for a smaller target group, for people with bad or no eyesight. We want to make it more for them to play by implementing the small modifications of making the tower more streamlined, thus nicer to touch and putting little holes in each tower piece so you have to not only finish the tower, but also find a way to make everything fit perfectly. Burak makes the 3d model for the tower on SketchUp so we can 3d print the tower the next day while the others work on backup materials.

Thursday: Tower of Waiting…

Printing the tower takes 6 hours

Time to make it all come together! We already have all the files needed for the 3d printer and laser cutter, so we are occupied with the finishing touches most of the day.