Phase 2 & 3
After phase 1 was done the group was struggling figuring out how to proceed. As the challenge was too broad, a lot of exploration was still required in terms of what could work and what not as the child would not communicate to say what he wants as other cases.
The following steps were taken in the process of phases 2 and 3:
Concept brainstorming and ideation
The group decided to ideate on possible games that could work for improving communication and collaboration skills. Here you can see a couple of those ideas.
Nevertheless, according to some of the groupmates these concepts were designed too much in detail and were doubting whether they would actually work or not. Therefore, a brainstorm session was scheduled where the team would work on brainstorming on some suitable ideas for the case that would be tried out later in the meeting with the case owner.
During the first meeting with Arne, a game with a music code was created. Arne interacted a lot while playing that game. So, it was decided to look for something with music.
Besides that, the games 'SET', 'dobble', and 'tangram' were suggested as possible games to develop, since these contain elements Arne really like.
Also chess and something like an escaperoom game could be possible solutions.
The last thing that could work for Arne is making the 'Thomas Calculus' book more attracting for children with colours and shapes.
Concept selection
After the brainstorm sessions, the group did not really see the potential in any of the concepts and application for the already defined challenge. Therefore, after some more brainstorming, the team came up with the idea of a block game, for which you would have some money in order to build what you were asked for, and you would have to ask which blocks you would like to buy as a player.
The team saw special potential in using the co-design phase as part of the game/concept already to improve the case owner's communication and collaboration for which a catalogue was designed which would include some blocks designed by the team and some empty spaces for the case owner to design his own blocks and its characteristics.
Co-design
What was done in the meetings?
The following meetings with the case owner were co-design sessions. During these sessions the group played some games with Arne to see how he interacts and communicates, after which the progress of the game was showed. When possible, (parts of) the game were played with Arne and based on his reaction points of improvement were written down.
The co-design sessions are summarised in a visual scheme that can be found below. An extensive summary of each meeting is written in the part 'Co-design summaries'.
Co-design summaries (session 1-3)
Co-design summaries (session 4-6)
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Prototyping
Designing the Shapes
The first step in making the prototype was designing the shapes.
Using various artefacts, including clay and colourful drawing utensils, it was tried to keep Arne interested in designing together. From this, the first shape was created: an owl. When this shape was drawn, the blocks were made of clay. It was already known that clay was not going to be the final option, as it is expensive and inefficient.
In spite of that, clay has it is positive sides: malleability. Because it is easy to knead forms with clay, it was used to see what was possible with blocks and shapes.
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