This was an insane experience, and I had a lot of fun and learned so much in ways that I didn’t expect. I have never taken a design or games class, so this new style of paced-paced, heavily iterative learning felt very exciting and definitely pushed me outside my comfort zone.
Our game was the Maker’s Minute, an interactive and social drawing/pitching game that centered around accessible design and efficient communication/persuasion. It actually wasn’t our initial idea; our initial idea was the “Worlds Worst Design Factory”, which still had the drawing plus pitching theme but it centered around drawing the worst possible design for a specific object with constraints (almost like reverse-learning). The game was heavily inspired by my our own experiences. We like games that are social, fast-paced, and heavily creative and some of our favorite games were Apples to Apples and Pictionary, which heavily inspired Maker’s Minute. I also think the addition of the educational component necessitated a lot of creative thinking, since we felt that it was easier to create a fun game than an educational one. Moreover, it felt even harder to create a game that was genuinely fun yet educational at the same time.
Regarding the mechanics of the game working together, our game has two main sections: drawing and pitching. The judge reveals two cards: the topic (what to draw) and the user (who this object is designed for). Then the players get one minute to draw their object, which made them bring out their user-centric yet creative side in order to create the best possible drawing. Then they each had 15 minutes to pitch their drawing to the judge, explaining why theirs was the best. When the drawing and pitching components came together, they brought out the aesthetics of storytelling (both in the actual drawing component and of course in the pitching component) and creativity (many players focused on the small details that really made their drawings unique and come to life). As many rounds occurred, these mechanics created a fun, repeatable rhythm of empathy, imagination, and critique, which mirrored the real-world design process of understanding, creating, and reflecting in a playful and accessible way.
The players learned in a variety of ways, both direct and indirect. We wanted to show that when we design for specific users with accessibility needs, it’s less about sympathy and more about awareness. Each round pushed the players to think outside the box and notice how small changes can have huge impacts for specific users. Of course, the actual drawing component made users combine their own experiences as well as general knowledge to design an accessible solution. This was fortified by the pitching component which helped share their creative approach to others. However, we added a lot of small “nudges” that added to the learning goal of both inclusive design and accessibility awareness. For example, on each user card we included stats and user stories, we had design cheat sheets which players could reference during the drawing component, and we used the information-filled user cards as scorekeeping units so users always looked at the card with information. Watching others play the game was very interesting because I realized there’s a lot designers take for granted, especially in the rules. Even something as simple as figuring out who the starting judge was needed to be explicitly mentioned, otherwise it caused a little confusion. It was also hilarious to see some of the drawings and interpretations, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the level of detail and thought into the drawings and the pitches.
Personally, the biggest thing I learned was how effective the play testing process actually was. I’ll be honest; at the start I thought our game was good to go. I thought it met the learning goal and it was fun. We we’re so wrong; nobody understood the learning goal and the game was more confusing than fun. Every play test revealed so much information about the game, and I saw how valuable the iterative process truly was. In other words, one of the main things I learned was designers are not users!
