PAINT IT BLACK
About
The story is empowerment to students through fictional stories about characters. It is a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style as the user selects one of three mystery characters symbolized with a lift up flap and a question mark inside the hardcover book we made. The flap lifts to a QR code which the user scans with iPhone camera app or a QR code reader on Android phones. This links to the digital interaction of the story on Twine. The user then gets the biography to the character they selected. The user then follows directions on Twine to go to the next page of the book which has pictures of the character to give a deeper connection. More flaps and QR codes lead to the scenario the character is in. Then, on Twine paths are given and the user selects an option for the character. The story advances, and then the user selects an outcome for their character which can be a good or bad outcome. There are multiple outcomes for each character.
Initial Design Goals
Our initial design goals were to have six characters with even more scenarios and outcomes. Even as ambitious as that sounds, we also wanted to make it so each outcome could overlap to all the characters and their stories. There was not enough time to do all of this so we lowered the number of characters down to three which also created less scenarios and outcomes we would have to write. Overall, the stories expressed empowerment because they were realistic scenarios that we felt students could relate to. We thought students could appreciate the stories regardless of good or bad outcomes because of how plausible they are. Everyone has to overcome hardships and it can be even harder whilst in school. We may have had to lower the amount of writing and characters but overall, I think we still reached what we envisioned. We just cut back quantity to give more quality.
Interaction
Our physical interaction was a hardcover book. We ripped the pages out of an already existing book, and created it into our book. The cover was changed with our title and the color scheme. The pages were added in with the flaps, pictures, QR Codes, and any writing we needed.
The digital interaction was Twine. It was blocks of text that were written by us, completely fictional. No pictures or color changing since the background is already black with white text. We kept the minimalist look to fit with our theme.
We succeeded in creating them separately. As far as them fitting together with cohesion, we struggled. The QR codes would just go to the start of the Twine portion instead of the page we needed to advance to. I'm not sure if we could have linked the url to specific pages in Twine. I think we didn't test the two interactions working together enough. It was a good idea, but the execution was lackluster.
Changes
Over the course of the quarter, there were quite a few changes in our group. Our original idea pitch was completely different. We had an idea for a detective sort of horror game. It would be "Choose your adventure" again with choices impacting the game. The character would investigate a mysterious with various decisions or clues impacting the outcome of the story. I think we struggled with how it related to empowerment for the user so we scrapped the idea for something more easy to relate to for the user.
We also had to finish out the project in a group of three which changed over the quarter. We originally had four, but after the first week our 4th member dropped the course. The new student who took his spot was only in attendance for class one or two times so we quickly realized he was not going to contribute in the class.
For the project, Ian was also supposed to be the book creator originally, but Nancy was a better fit for the task so Ian was moved to website creator.
Lastly, the major changes to the project idea we actually went with was removing any dice which would've gave a random character assigned to the user. We lowered the amount of characters which lowers the amount of scenarios and outcomes.
Design Notes
Ian:
My primary task was to create the website and manage it. I updated with completed assignments and anything and everything that needed to go on it. I updated the theme to fit with our Paint It Black title. That's why it is very minimalist with a black and white color scheme. Originally, I had a different theme and I would make a new page for every assignment we had to post. I have changed the theme on every page since then and removed a lot of unnecessary pages. I condensed everything to fit better with a nicer flow. I also removed a lot of pointless buttons, and tried to make everything match as closely as possible. I have never done website design or maintenance before, but it was a fun learning experience, and I gave it my best shot.
Jeremy:
Doing the Twine portion of the project seemed to also compliment the brainstorming portion of our project. At first, the brainstorming started with a simple flow chart that showed what steps and screens the user will come across as they navigate through our game. Once we finished and agreed with the flowchart, it was easy to translate that into Twine since the interface was already a flowchart. The QR codes were fairly straight-forward, having them link to each of our different characters, although I feel that the QR code feature could have been more integrated into our project rather than just at the start. For example, we could have implemented QR codes into the decisions that the players made instead of choosing the decision on Twine. Overall, I feel that the Twine and QR code process went smooth since we communicated our ideas to each other clearly.
Nancy:
Three things that went well with the prototyping post would be our group members assigned tasks, submitting assignments on time, and also working together as a group on our project. I could say more than three things that went well in the prototyping post.
Three things that could’ve gone better I would have to say that I wish we would have looked over our twine part because we had some things we needed to change and fix for our game to work. Another thing that could’ve gone better would be the initial prototype that we had created; we were not well prepared as we were having issues with our group specifically I and another group member. Also, I wish we would have created much more interaction with the players.
If I had an additional opportunity to redo our project, I would create a better prototype of our initial project and also, I would make sure to play the game before having others play the game to make changes or fix mistakes if needed.
To recreate our experience it starts with:
1) Story writing. Write out three characters with a biography to each one. Then, write out a scenario for each one including the personal hardship they will face. You then create four outcomes for each character. Two good, two bad.
2) Twine. The written story goes in Twine. You have separate Twine games for each character. It goes biography --> scenario
--> outcomes
We also included links to certain people in the characters' lives that give more insight to the situation. For instance, a brother or romantic partner.
3) Physical book. The book looks like a book. Give it a cover. First page is three flip-up panels with question marks on them. Underneath will be the QR codes that correspond to one character each, the QR codes link to the character biographies on Twine. Next page is the pictures of the characters. These can be drawings or photographs of anyone you choose. After that, the next page is scenarios that come up in the book which again link to the page in Twine via QR code. This is where the personal hardship comes in. The last page includes the outcomes. There will be four flaps for each character. Two good and two bad. Underneath are the QR codes which link to the outcomes on Twine.
That is the way we created our book, and these directions should give basically an exact copy.