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This report must contain:
(*) A detailed statement of the learning objectives for your gamelet.
(*) A machine-readable representation of a storyboard for your gamelet (if you have one) or a brief description of your paper storyboard (which you must bring to class). You can use the GORP project thumbnail.
(*) A summary of the comments from your sponsor.
Post these items using the GORP system, as explained in a message from Alex.
Don’t forget to file your individual weekly progress report on the Yahoo site.
In interacting with your sponsor, keep the following points in mind:
Steer the discussion to concrete issues rather than abstractions. A major function of your storyboard is to make your gamelet concrete to the sponsor. Asking the sponsor to picture one of his or her students playing the game is an example of way to move toward concrete ideas: how do you think this would work for Pat is more concrete than how do you think students in general will react to this. There’s a lot of evidence that people’s abstract opinions and judgments are just not as good as their concrete ones, even though most people prefer giving abstract opinions.
Steer the conversation towards analysis (“why bad or why good”) and away from evaluation (“how bad or how good”). As designers, you can’t really DO much with a judgment that a design is good or bad, but if your sponsor can point out and EXPLAIN weaknesses or strengths you have stuff to work on. Note that this applies to strengths as well as weaknesses: if I tell you something is good, so what, but it I tell you it is good BECAUSE of such and such there may be ways you can apply this analysis elsewhere in the design to create new strengths.
Be aware that most people do not like to deliver criticism (telling you your baby is ugly). So you have to work to make this comfortable for them. After politely expressing your appreciation for the praise you are almost certain to get, bring out that criticism is part of the design process, and that you will really value the criticism they can supply. Another worthwhile tactic is to stress that your preliminary ideas are just that, preliminary, and that you have not invested your whole sense of self-worth in these rough ideas. Along these lines, some designers deliberately make their initial storyboards or design sketches look crude, so that people won’t hold back from making suggestions for improvement.