Entry 8 - The Group Process

Our group of three had both in-person sessions and online calls. The in-person sessions were where we made the most progress, as we were able to jump off of each other's ideas more easily in the same room. Online calls were better for narrowing options and dividing work. Because we were developing ideas independently, and sometimes arriving at meetings with different understandings of where we had left things, there was sometimes friction.

Three notable specific tensions shaped the concept. The first was about how much to explain in our final presentations, whether the game mechanics needed spelling out or whether over-explaining would flatten the concept's emotional quality and lead to unneeded confusion. We resolved this by separating what the user needed to feel from what the audience needed to understand.

The second was around the companions evolution stages. Initially I wanted the evolution stages to be triggered by multiple sensor thresholds, for example the garden's soil moisture reaching a certain number which would benefit the garden ecosystem, however this felt too complex and would rely on sensor data we didn't have access to. We decided to simplify the idea so the creature changes as the garden changes, without requiring the child to track which sensor drove what.

The third remains unresolved: where the evolutionary cycle should start. Should different companions begin at different stages depending on when in the year you visited and got the companion device? One group member said yes as seasonal variation is an important and meaningful part of environmental growth and change. I believed the cycles should all start at the same time, as the alternative would create inequality, some children would inherit a more developed creature through no choice of their own and have less of a game to play. In the end we decided on the latter idea as it aligned with our main goal, making our design less complicated. The companion device would be available to rent from the museum from November - January and each companion device would hatch in January with the complete evolution cycle lasting a year before the device has to be traded in.

Our group was harmonious and respectful, no one dominated proceedings. However, there was some tension around differences in ideas which worked to our benefit. The tension around how much of the concept we should explain produced a clearer distinction between system logic and user experience and the tension around evolution stages produced a more simplified evolution journey.