Journal Entry # 9: Reflection

The process of designing and developing a game is not easy, especially when designers are working on the process by themselves. According to Rowland (1993) the design process depends on the designer and what he or she wants to design. This means that the product or artifact to be designed will reflect the designer’s abilities and skills. In this study, the designer was not only working conceptualizing the idea of the game and how it would work, but actually developing it. Therefore, some limitations of this game are indicated as below:

• Time

Due to time constraints, the designer did not have sufficient opportunities to work in depth on other possible strategies and game aspects that could be approached for this simulation game.

• Programming skills

The programming skills are essential when developing an online game. Mulligan and Patrovsky (2003) discuss about the need of balancing the creativity aspects of design over the technical skills, since there is usually a gap between the intended development and the actual one. Regarding this fact, the game developed lacks more interactivity and simulations because the designer had limited skills to develop the program.

• Subject Matter Expert

Since my knowledge about the content of this game was limited, I depended a lot on my client to help me to understand and realize the subject of the game. Unfortunately, since we had different schedules and my client had never experienced the process of the design and development, it was hard to maintain a regular pace of communication regarding the project.

Although there were some constraints, I believe this experience was very helpful for me since I learned a lot of new things such as preparing a healthy meal, watching out for portion size of food intakes and also I learned more about the technical part, which is not my strengthens - Action Script.

References

Rowland, G. (1993). Designing Instructional Design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 41(1), 79-91.

Mulligan, J., & Patrovsky, B. (2003). Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide. New Riders Publishing.

Journal Entry # 8

The showcase night was a great and fun experience. However, I have to confess I was little nervous about my project and people’s response to it. I was really surprised to see that people enjoyed my project and had fun playing. Some people gave me more advices and feedback if I would like to continue working on this project.

Also, I really enjoyed looking through other people’s project. I noticed that a lot of people were very creative with their project and I think they did very well in their final product.

Regarding my project, I plan to keep working on, even though I’m not required. The reason why I would like to do this is because I know that the subject that I’m treating in my project is very delicate and it needs a lot of work. I know that the time constraint and my skills were a limitation for this project. However, if I don’t have any requirements to be completed, I’ll have more time to work on this on my own pace.

According to Salen & Zimmerman (2005), in the design of games, there are three parts that defines this process such as: context, designer and meaning. Regarding this fact, I believe that the role of the designer is essential for the process of developing a game. During the process of the developing my game, I realized that designing a game is not an easy task since I have faced problems not only during the design process, but also during the development phase. Another thing that I realized while reading this article is the importance of engaging players in the context. However, the context needs to be very well-elaborated. Barab et al (2007) have pointed in his study the relevance of balancing the context/narrative with the content; otherwise learners will be deeply devoted to the context, failing to appreciate the subject and content of the activity.

Regarding these points, I think my project has a specific context, but it lacks in the narrative part (story folds). Since this was only a prototype, I have been taking notes of every single detail that I should make to the project in the future.

This semester was not my best, but I’m really glad that I was able to have my project done for showcase.

Reference

Barab, S., Sandler, T., Heiselt, C., Hickey, D., & Zuiker, S. (2007). Relating narrative, inquiry,
and inscriptions: Supporting consequential play. Journal of Science Education &
Technology, 16(1), 59-82.

Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2005). Game design and meaningful play. In J. Raessen & J. Goldstein (Eds.), Handbook of computer game studies (pp.60-79). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Service hours # 3

I committed to design logos for the Studio community. So far, I have developed one logo for the studio wiki. For this graphic illustration, I spent 2 hours working on. Here is the final result:
Organization: Studio
Contact: Dr. Michael Orey

Service hours # 2

I developed some graphic illustration for one of the 6210 team. The graphic illustration was a sequence of pose of a whale. I spent 3 hours and 30 minutes working on this illustration. Here is the graphic illustration:
Organizations: Imaginative Designs (6210)
Project Manager: Carrie Bishop

Desk Crit Received #7

From: ki-hyun Koo
Date: 04/23/08

I think that your project concept is very useful and creative. Because it deals with health issues that we all are mindful. I myself also try to calculate calories when I eat Italian food.
I think that game approach would be on of the easiest and most comfortable way to learn the subject. I guess learners would understand the subject easy compared with other strategies (ex> book, homepage, etc)


However, I would like to suggest you few points after experiencing this program. Hope my suggestions would be helpful to you.

1) To me, colors of the above picture look a bit dark, and the objects are not quite related to Italian food, or preparing meal (ex> cook, or person who preparing his/her meal in the kitchen) will be better.

2) I think there are many words with same emphasis in this page, so it’s hard for me to recognize what is the important in the page. How about using bullets or images to improve the readability of the page?

3) There isn’t “back” button, so learners can’t see previous page as they proceed the program. So, if the learners want to know “instruction” part (the first page of this program,), they have to finish all the pages and start again.

How about making navigation menu? next, back button >

4) Since I have no idea of making Italian food, learners like me may need more information what is the best way to cook Italian food. I think the learners also need more information, or tips for this program. How about presenting specific examples? For example, explain advantages or disadvantages for each one when we cook Italian food.

5) After completing this program, the learners were to get feedback. I think it’s a great idea. I would however give more specific feedbacks such as good advices or so.

Desk Crit Received #6

From: Amy Wright
Date: 04/17/08

Given to Daisy at the dress rehearsal. As I went through the module, I noticed that the nutritional informaiton did not come up immediately and people may not realize that it is available if they don't put their cursor over the box so you might want to just have it up versus having it appear. A back button would be nice so people can change their choices after seeing they are not making good choices, but I know that requires more difficult/in depth programming. The serving size is a little confusing or portion size so you may want to rephrase that so people understand how they should be counting the calories. I think providing people a reference of what an oz. is would be nice since most people don't look at their food and think of it in that quantity. Its hard to visualize how much is 1 portion or 2 ozs per serving size. You may want to include some information about how that is listed on the nutritional information of foods and what it all means.Most people don't know how to read and interpret it.

I really enjoyed playing with it and it surprised me the number of calories in one kind of cheese or bread versus the others.

Thanks for sharing,

Amy

Journal Entry 7: Last week :-s

Final week, I can’t believe this semester is almost over and I’m about to get my project done :) I’m really surprised with the amount of desk crits that I received and all the comments and positive feedback that I have got so far. I’ll be posting here pretty soon two more desk crits that I have gotten and also my service hours. I have developed the logo for the studio wiki and also whale illustrations for one of the 6210 teams.

During this past week, I have collected real photos of the foods to add to my project. Some of the desk crits that I have received pointed out the importance of having real photos or appropriated graphics to this project. Also, I have created a character to my game simulation. This character will be introduced in the first screen of the game and he’ll serve as guide and reference to players.

One thing that I believe that I won’t be able to accomplish by tomorrow is to make all the changes that people requested. For example, it took me more than I have imagined to collect real photos of the food, especially regarding copyright issues. Some of the photos I took them myself and I don’t think they came out that good.

Also this past week, I read Dr. Rieber’s article: “Seriously Considering Play: Designing Interactive Learning Environments Based on the Blending of Microworlds, Simulations, and Games”. I really enjoyed reading his article. I think he put a lot of effort in this literature review, gathering ideas and main concepts about games, simulations and microworlds. In this article, he defines educational simulation as a system that let players/users experience the results of actions or decisions through feedback generated by the simulation (Rieber,1996). I think his definition of simulation defines very well what I’m trying to accomplish with my project.

I’ll keep working on it, trying to make as good as possible for tomorrowJ!! I know for sure that this project will definitely need more work in the future in order to become a full game (I couldn’t do it due to time constraint and lack of AS skills).

Reference:

Rieber, L. P. (1996). Seriously considering play: Designing interactive learning environments based on the blending of microworlds, simulations, and games. Educational Technology Research & Development, 44(2), 43-58.

Desk Crit Received: #5

From: Audra Edwards
Date:04/13/08

Hi, Daisy!

Here is some feedback about your game. We discussed some of these items Thursday night.

I really like the design of your game and think that it is a neat way to help someone learn about preparing a meal for a diabetic. I have no knowledge about how to prepare a balanced meal for someone with these special needs, so I found the game to be particular interesting and informative.

The introduction is very appropriate and gives good information about how to participate in the activity. You might want to add a statement about having a piece of paper and a pencil handy to help with calculations.

As we discussed, when the game begins, it would be good to have the information for each food already displayed. It is fun, though, to watch the information appear dynamically! Maybe you could add an instruction that says to mouse over each food for the information and then click on the food to choose it. Remember that I suggested you change the words "portion size" to "number of servings" since this is the typical language used on food labels. I like how the calories are calculated automatically based on the number of servings. If someone accidentally leave the serving size blank, the calculation says NaN- maybe add a message here in case that happens. It may be helpful to put something in the directions about clicking on the total calories button to calculate- someone may not realize that they need to do this and they may just continue on to the next section.

I don't know how difficult this would be, but it would be neat to have an area on the screen that shows the choices that have already been made. For example, when the learner moves on to the bread screen, the information about the meat they chose is still displayed somewhere.

The last suggestion that I have is to not only have the calories calculated for each section, but also the carbohydrates. This is because the game specifies that the calories and carbohydrates are important is preparing a meal for a diabetic. It wouldn't hurt to also include the total amount of fat since that information is included in the nutrition information.

I hope that you find my feedback helpful. I enjoyed your project and think that you have constructed a great educational game!

Audra
PS Please see the attachment for some editing feedback.

Desk Crit Received: #4

From: Sunny (HeuiSeon Lim)
Date:04/12/08

Hi! Daisy!

First of all, I love your concept of the project since I am concerned with how much calories that I intake by the food that I eat. Also, Italian is my favorite dinner menu, but it takes lots of calories and carbohydrate! Therefore, your project will benefit not only people who concern with diabetes, but also most of people like me who want to try not to take more calories and carbohydrate than they should.

I am very impressed with the features such as menu selection, different portion size, especially; the function of auto calculation at the end is very useful! I can’t imagine how much effort and many hours and you spent get all the function working properly.

Here is my suggestion for just little things that nice to have.
1. More Selection of the food: I guess it is always nice to have more choices but you already have most popular items for each section.
2. Some kind of feature that make more noticeable about the different calories of the foods.
3. Some improvement on graphic in general would be nicer. 

Again, you did a very impressive job to make everything working properly. I can’t wait to see you

Desk Crit Received: # 3

From Donna Washington
Date: 2/12/08

Daisy,

I wanted to send you this deskcrit of your Prepare Your Meal project after using in during our Studio Dress Rehearsal. I thought your idea for the activity is definitely delightful, which I believe is one of the requirements for the Blue Sock award. I liked how you provide information regarding the food choices and then give the opportunity for the learner to choose based on comparing and contrast. I also thought how you provide immediate feedback for the learner is important. The user knows immediately if their meal choice is appropriate for the purpose of the activity.

I do have a couple suggestions that you may consider. The first is possibly having a place dedicated to place written step by step directions for the learner. You may remember I had to restart and choose my meal again because I didn't realize I needed to click submit ( I believe that was the name of the button). That would make the activity a little more learner directed, but I'm pretty sure you had that covered already. The only other suggestion I would make is to perhaps have a little content prior to the activity on how one goes about choosing a healthy meal. Maybe some dietary suggestions on the amount of carbs, fats, or sugar a food should contain. It's just a thought, so use what you can and discard the rest.

All in all I enjoyed what you have developed. I believe it's an activity we all could benefit from.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Donna W.

Desk Crit Recived 2

From Scott Foster
Date 04/10/08

Click on the following link to see his Desk Crit:
http://smf95.myweb.uga.edu/bizfusion1/bizfusion/deskcrit.html

Journal Entry 6.2 - It's working :D!!!

I'm really happy that I have gotten my project to work for the dress rehearsal :) I had received precious feedback from Donna, Audra, Scott and Sunny (all their comments/suggestions will be added to this blog). I know there are a lot of things that needs to be improved in my project and I’ll work on them this week. I really have to thank my co-worker, Jin Tang, who helped me to get this project to work the way that I wanted :D.

Observing people interact with my project during dress rehearsal made me realized that some of the functions such as buttons are not very clear for the user. Another thing that people commented was to have a graphic or illustration that would help people’s understanding of the serving size of the food. Overall, people really liked the idea and the concept. Someone came to me and said that they were on a diet and this activity would help them to control their calorie intake.

Nowadays, more and more educational games are becoming a fusion of gaming aspects and real-life simulations, which can also be defined as “serious games” (de Freitas, 2006). And this is exactly what I’m planning to accomplish with my project. I know it would be hard to have a full simulation game going on, but I’ll try to get as close as possible to real-life interactions. That was my idea from the beginning. When I searched about developing games, I realized that military, business, and social and health settings have been developing and implementing simulation games in their instructional programs. According to Cohen (2006), the gaming simulations are intended to help people to learn how to work through the complexities of different context. Thus, I’ll keep trying to work on the “Prepare your meal” game in order to make it to look/feel more realistic.

Reference:

• Cohen, S. (2006). The curricular role for understanding social decisions. In S. Cohen, K. E. Portney, D. Rehberger & C. Thorsen (Eds.), Virtual decisions : digital simulations for teaching reasoning in the social sciences and humanities (pp.47-63). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

• de Freitas, S. I. (2006). Using games and simulations for supporting learning. Learning, Media and Technology, 31(4), 343-358.

Desk Crit IV

Date: Fri 11 Apr 13:10:52 EDT 2008
From: Daisyane Barreto Add To Address Book | This is Spam
Subject: Desk Crit
To: 81bada@uga.edu

Hi Eun Ju,

I really liked your project and how you used a clean and easy-to-use interface. The explanation that you provided in the first lesson about the site navigation was a great idea. It makes things simpler :)!!In general, you did an awesome job with you project and I know that you are still working hard to get everything done. I have only one suggestion for your project so far.

For lesson #5 “Place each lighting instrument”, you could have the following scene: a person sitting on a chair or maybe something similar like you have in lesson 1, displaying all the lights in the right position. Later, the learner would go to another scene, in which s/he would have only the person sitting on the chair in the right position. The learners would need to remember and match the light to its right position. This is just an idea that I had in mind :D!!

Well, I think that’s it for now. You did a fantastic job :)!! And good luck finalizing your project ;)!!

Best,
Daisy

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Desk Crit III

Date: Fri 11 Apr 12:34:28 EDT 2008
From: Daisyane Barreto Add To Address Book | This is Spam
Subject: Desk Crit
To: cjh9123@uga.edu

Hi Jea,

I think you project looks very good and your interface and graphic designs look awesome (I really liked the little doll at beginning :) – so cute! Overall, you did a great job with you project and I know that you are working hard to get it done. I have only a few suggestions for your project so far:

1) I noticed that you have tabs on the top of your program that you will take the user to another page or activity. I think you could add a brief explanation in the first page or on the help section, just to let the learner know what s/he will see or will be doing on those sections.

2) Another thing that I notice is that for your project, you want the learner to be able “to think a loud”. Thus, I think it would be good if you had some sort of tutorial or step-by-step to guide the learner through this process.
Well, I think that’s it for now. You did a great job :)!! And good luck finalizing your project ;)!!

Best,
Daisy

Project

This is the link to my project:

Prepare your meal

Desk Crit- Received

Desk Crit Received: 04/01
From: Donna Washington

Daisy,

I know you've been working hard to design your nutrition game. I think you have a great idea in the making, unfortunately due to our course time constraints, I know getting it where you want it to be has been difficult.

I believe your game idea is great because the basic premise can be applied to so many health issues. Beside planning meals for a person with diabetes you could also add a twist and have the player plan a meal that would meet the guidelines of a calorie reduced eating plan. The possiblities are endless.

I like the idea of a shopping cart model because it feels very life-like as well as something people are accustomed to if they have ever shopped online.

I do have a comment/suggestion I'd like to offer. I'm not sure of the formula you've suggested to determine if the meal meets your proposed requirements. You might think of adding some specific data regarding the problems of the meal. Something like a table showing the recommended fat, carb's,etc. and a readout showing the chosen meal's content. That way the learner can see in what nutritional areas they would need to reconsider.

I really hope you are able to work out the "bugs" and produce a great game.
Take care.

Donna

Entry 6.1 - working to make this game happen

Well, this week I have been following the “shopping cart” tutorial that Josh indicated me. However, the tutorial seems too advanced for my ActionScript (AS) skills – [Click here to check out the Shopping Cart tutorial]. The tutorial starts explaining how to create classes and AS files and as you go further you can create a shopping cart. After going through it, I wasn’t able to figure out by myself how I could implement this into my project. Therefore, I asked my co-worker (Jin Tang) for help - her skills in AS are way advanced that mine. I explained to her my project and my frustration trying to understand the AS code. After talking to her, she gave me some examples and explanations on how I could do this in an easier way. So, she gave this FLA file that she created as an example of what I need for my project. Her file does what I need to do for my project; however, I still need to work on it to make function correctly.

Thus, I’ll be working on it this weekend and I’ll post my results here this Sunday. So, please, bear with me until then :-S, okay?! I hope can get it to work by then.

By the way, I got a written Desk Crit by Donna Washington this week and I'll post here later in another post.