DesignAday

Carnival Murder Mystery

My Game Design class wrapped up last Tuesday. I’m declaring it a success. I’m very pleased with the work that was done, and my students claim to see a lot of value in what they learned this semester. On top of that, it was an awful lot of fun to teach.

One of the three teams was working on Carnival Murder Mystery: a board game for 2–4 players.

Step right up to the Carnival Murder Mystery! Be cautious and alert as you and your fellow detectives investigate the grounds of this frightening carnival. A body has been discovered and it is up to you to uncover this horrible mystery. Use the clues you find along the way to eliminate the alleged suspects. Be the first detective to solve this chilling mystery. Enjoy your ride!

Inspired by the game Clue, Carnival Murder Mystery has players figure out who the murderer is, the weapon they used, and the location in which the murder took place. The students attempted to take the gameplay to a new level, however, with a more complicated logic puzzle. Players must move around the board, visiting locations to claim clues, some of which will be kept private. There are also cards that allow players to sneak a peek at one of their opponent’s clues.

The spaces with magnifying glasses are the ones that contain clues. After landing on such a space, the player draws a clue card and marks off the space with a whiteboard marker, indicating that the clue has already been confiscated.

The game includes investigator cards that players can use to keep track of the clues they have uncovered.

It was a real struggle for the team to move the game away from being a Clue clone, and it could still be improved. Their clues were relatively simplistic, and they could easily develop a more engaging narrative with them. But, the game is quite playable, and they received a lot of positive feedback during their playtests. The board creates a bit of a race dynamic to get the clues, which Clue doesn’t have, and there are many more variables to track. The team did an outstanding job developing a dark, creepy aesthetic for their carnival, and I’m satisfied with the results.

IxDA Pittsburgh Workshop Open for Resgistration

My workshop, Sitting in the Driver’s Seat: creating production-ready CSS, which I led at Interaction 13 in Toronto, is getting a second run in Pittsburgh. All proceeds, beyond the rental of the space, are going to IxDA Pittsburgh for use in future programming. Since this is the first event to which we are charging admission, we’re keeping it very accessible. It’s only $100 for professionals and $50 for students. Spots are limited, so register now through Eventbrite. After you register, RSVP on IxDA Pittsburgh’s Facebook event page to let everyone know you’re going.

CSS 3 has handed the keys back to designers. With a syntax and structure that speaks our language and a fine-grained level of control, it empowers designers to not only prototype in the actual medium, but to contribute production-ready code. The days of pointing at the screen over the developer’s shoulder and trying to explain how something needs to shift three pixels are over. In fact, much of the JavaScript currently employed for simple UI behaviors can be replaced with well-architected styles. Take the driver’s seat, and make the CSS your UI specification document.

This workshop is intended for intermediate designers interested in gaining more control over their team’s final product. Participants are expected to possess a working knowledge of CSS. They should be able to read a stylesheet and understand what it is doing in the HTML page that references it. They should be able to write CSS styles and apply them to HTML elements to achieve a desired layout on a page.

As a participant, you will:

• Familiarize yourself with the tools you’ll need to integrate with your development team.
• Learn how Object Oriented CSS (OOCSS) can lead to cleaner, more maintainable code.
• Discover how to replace heavy-handed, inefficient JavaScript with CSS-driven behavior.
• Get started on your own library of CSS components.

About Jack Moffett
With a BFA in Graphic Design from West Virginia University and a Masters in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon, Jack has been designing web, desktop, and mobile applications for over a decade. He has worked in both research and industry environments and has been teaching design part-time for more than eight years at WVU. As Senior Interaction Designer at Inmedius, a Boeing Company, Jack’s responsibilities cover the gamut from initial user research and product conceptualization through to implementation and testing. As such, his skill set includes visual design, information design, and front-end implementation. He has designed software tools for Lockheed Martin, Shell, DaimlerChrysler, Eaton, and many organizations within the U.S. military, including Joint Service Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Naval Reactors, and NCIS. Jack has spoken at conferences and led workshops to teach designers how to integrate with their development teams and participate in implementation. He writes about design on designaday.tumblr.com.

Education + Design + Crowdsourcing = ?

I have a question for you. What will happen when design is taught in K-12 grades, not as its own subject—not as Design, but simply as the process by which problems are solved and new things invented? It’s not so far-fetched. I’ve been perturbed by the whole STEM movement in education because of its apparent exclusion, or at least oversight of, the importance of training in creativity through artistic endeavors. Then I read an article like KidDIY: 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge aims to shape future of innovation, and recognize that in some cases, whether or not the organizers realize it, their STEM initiative has turned to STEAM, although a more apt acronym might be TEAMS.

Now, let’s imagine several generations of youth growing up with this kind of education. Some will excel in the core design skills and specialize in that role professionally within various organizations, but everyone will have the basic background. What business schools are calling “Design Thinking” will just be “Thinking.” Now, layer atop that the services popping up—not Kickstarter so much as Quirky and, related to the aforementioned article, GameSprout.

The full question, then, is this: What happens when everyone is educated in the design process and given the tools, collaborative community, and professional advice to create… well, anything?

Backing Design for Good

Lindsey Estep is one of my graduate students. She came to the program with not only a degree in Graphic Design, but business as well. It should be no surprise, then, that she is exploring design entrepreneurship. She has been focusing this semester on self-publishing through Kickstarter.

Rather than me telling the whole story, I invite you to view her video. Perhaps you may even feel moved to visit her campaign page and contribute to this worthy endeavor. She is nearing her goal, with 16 days to go.

Practicing What I Teach

Regular readers of DesignAday know that I’m currently teaching a class on Game Design. As I was planning the course, I decided to gamify the grading system. So far, it seems to be working rather well.

Every week, there is a Main Quest that is worth a certain number of points. The amount varies from week to week but works out to be 5 points per week. Along with that, I provide a list of Side Quests. Side quests are typically worth 1 or 2 points, depending on how involved they are. To receive an A+ in the class, a student must earn 100 points by the end of the semester. The main quest line adds up to 75 points, and attendance is worth .67 points per week—10 points total. Perfect attendance and satisfactory completion of the main quest line would earn a student a solid B. The rest of the points are earned by doing the side quests, which should account for 1 point per week.

The beauty of this system is that a student can always make up for past mistakes by doing more side quests. Miss a day of class? Do an extra side quest. Maybe your work on the main quest for the week was sub-par and you weren’t awarded all of the points. So, you do a 2-point side quest the next week to make up for it. Students that aren’t performing well end up doing more work, getting more practice analyzing and designing games.

The awarding of points is still based on qualitative evaluation of the work. Motivated students will likely end up with more than 100 points at the end.

Fold

As a college senior, Sean Dooley has some issues with laundry. He set himself the task of designing a laundry bin that would be more space efficient for purposes of storage and travel. After a lot of research into existing products, he was most influenced by paper grocery bags. After initial brainstorming and sketching, he produced a tiny prototype from cardboard, paper, and masking tape.

It took many iterations to get the folds right, especially as he increased the size of each prototype. Eventually, he had one made out of fabric that was large enough to test with friends and family.

The final prototype utilized heavier materials and sturdier construction. A more comfortable grip was created on the handles. Not only does it fold up small enough to stash in a suitcase, it serves another function as well. Laying flat on a table, it serves as a folding station. The two ribs running vertical on the side of the bin are guides for folding shirts.

Sean fully embraced the iterative process, rapidly producing prototypes that helped him surmount obstacles. The result was a design that clearly solved the stated problem and a prototype good enough to use as a production model. I could easily see this product on the shelf at Bed, Bath, & Beyond.

Games in the Making

We’re well into the semester now, and my students have divided into six teams, each team designing a different game. There is quite a variety, and I’m pleased with the ideas so far.

1. Monster Morph is a card game inspired by Pokémon and Gloom. There will be battles between creatures with special powers, but it will incorporate Gloom’s transparent modifier card mechanic to morph the attributes of the monsters during play. If done right, this should result in more emergent behavior.
2. Storm Chasers will be a single-player video game in which you try to capture the best quality footage of storms, as well as relevant weather data, while avoiding mishaps. Current plans include upgradable vehicles and equipment, educational content, and a social sharing aspect.
3. Bridezilla is a board game that has players competing to be the Maid of Honor. The bride has a lot of tasks for her bridesmaids to help with, and everything must be perfect for her big day. The game has a race-to-the-finish dynamic, but the team is currently considering various ways to make it non-linear, introducing strategic choices for more interesting gameplay.
4. Top Newscaster is a party game with a Cranium sort of vibe. Players are trying to get a lead anchor role, and to do so, they have to complete challenges such as reading silly news stories with a professional, straight face, or making up the facts of a story to go along with a random series of images.
5. Pillage the Village flips the cliché dragon fairytale on its head by putting players in the role of the dragons. The goal is to collect the largest hoard of gold and gems by successfully selecting and attacking the wealthiest towns. Watch out for knights!
6. Carnival is a murder mystery inspired by the game Clue. Of course, it takes place in a sinister carnival, rather than a mansion, and the team is currently working on ideas to make it less derivative while keeping the excitement of uncovering clues and trying to identify the murderer.

Gluten Free Goodness

I’m fortunate enough to not suffer any allergies, but I know plenty of people that do. I’ve witnessed how difficult it can be for people with dietary restrictions to eat out. Lindsey Estep, one of my students last semester, has first-hand experience with gluten allergies and the situations one must deal with at restaurants. She decided to take on this problem as her semester-long project.

Lindsey developed a service design that she prototyped with the help of Terra Cafe, a local Morgantown restaurant. Her solution involved table placards that served both to inform customers that there are gluten-free selections and, by turning it around and setting it out on the table, indicate that someone at the table was in need of gluten-free fare. The wait staff carried matching cards that they could write gluten-free orders on. These cards would then accompany the order to the kitchen, returning to the patron with their food as reassurance that their needs were recognized and met by everyone involved in preparing the meal.

The system was tested out on a Wednesday after some social media advertising. Only two customers required gluten-free service during the trial, but both indicated when surveyed afterward that they felt much safer and would be much more likely to frequent the restaurant if such a system were implemented.

The Rock Dock

Will Deskins was dissatisfied with the standard guitar stand. They are typically made of hollow, aluminum piping painted black. This makes them hard to see when empty and easy to trip over. They are light, with a small footprint, which makes them easy to knock over when holding a guitar. Having identified these issues, Will designed and prototyped a guitar stand that would not only do a better job holding a guitar, but would have additional utility and be attractive as a piece of furniture.

The Rock Dock is much larger and a good deal heavier than the standard guitar stand, so it wouldn’t be convenient for travel, but it works quite well in a studio or home. The arching neck support folds down to reveal a storage area in the back for cables. A small drawer in the bottom is the perfect place to keep picks and replacement strings. The base is padded where the guitar rests on it and has a slot to accommodate the pickup/strap button on the bottom of some guitars. The prototype pictured above doesn’t sport them, but the final product would also include power outlets in the base, relieving the need for a power strip to plug in an amp and other equipment. The entire stand is made of stained wood, giving it a sculptural quality.