MINDFUL

The Project

For the class “Interacting in the Workplace”, I had to work on a new project with a different team each week. For my first week, I, alongside Alexandra, Jayvee, and Josh, was tasked to make a game for the psychology department of Vanier. For it, my team and I came up with the idea of “Mindful”, a trivia-based card game to introduce new and/or potential students to what psychology even is.

While, I did give input on other aspects of the game, my primary focus on this project was designing characters for the game to act as mascots as we aimed and create a playful and welcoming vibe for the game.

Problem Statement

In the initial get together to talk about the concept for the game, my team had a lot of difficulty trying to conceive what the game should be. After all, other than it being “a game for psychology students”, we had no information given which in and of itself was annoying and problematic. It could’ve been for late-stage student or for new ones just having started. We were simply given the vaguest concept on what to create, with no direction or desire, only to be met with distaste for little tidbits and non-specific requests for changes to be made such as “it shouldn’t be displayed this way” followed by no ideas on how to actually display it.

Additionally, there was also the problem of creating an entire game within the span of a week. Whereas others had to make bulletin boards or little handouts, we had to make a game. It was a massive undertaking in comparison to the others as the task includes all that is needed of other projects such as design and research while also needing to make something seemingly fun and engaging while still being educational and easy to understandable to play. The time constraint and complexity in comparison to the other projects to be assigned helped contribute to the irritating and borderline demoralizing process of this one project. It is to be additionally said that this was also the first project of the many this class had to give, not foreboding positively to what the rest of the class would entail.

Research / Design Process

Once we had the initial idea, we then researched aspects of other educational games/subjects with most utilizing a playful and/or welcoming aesthetic with vibrant colors such as Duolingo, and sometimes a cast of characters to act as mascots for them. Additionally, during this initial brainstorm, we were inspired and explored other concepts like the idea of including roles in the game similar to games like “werewolf” just to make it more dynamic, inspiring them off of jobs and students.

With that initial idea chosen, we then quickly drew up some sketches, trying to get a clearer idea, consistent design and feedback on expectations amongst eachother. Here are a few sketches we initially showed eachother.

After that, we then introduced the concept to the “client” (the teacher), seeking for any changes they desired or any direction they wanted, marking down the notes in a group chat shared among the group. They wanted the game to be more about psychology and, thus, we scrapped some of the initial gameplay in favor of pushing forward more of the trivia aspect of the game.

Conclusion

In the end, while the project wasn’t one of my favorites, it was an introduction to the continuous slog that the rest of the class entailed. However, still, it ended with a cute and somewhat memorable design among the projects done over the course of the class.