Core Concepts

Why This Location?

• We wanted to hold our game demonstration in a location that we, as a team, found inspiring - locations proposed by team members included the upside-down city, the comics and games area, and the young children's creative play area (which was ultimately chosen)
• We wanted a location that communicated with the outside environment (thus eliminating the comics and games area)
• We wanted a location where children were free to play without worrying about noise issues or disturbing other visitors to Dokk1
• One of the librarians told us that the concept of "Learning by Playing" is central to Dokk1, making Dokk1 and the creative play area the ideal location for our game

Why These Stakeholders?

• We wanted to make a game targeted at younger children, as the majority of our game pitches during the course had been intended for an older audience
• Since children in this age range are likely to be accompanied by their parents, we considered parents as "secondary" direct stakeholders. The children's creative play area has comfortable seating my the windows where parents can wait, chat, and interact with playing children
• We were inspired by the children's art in the location we chose and in other areas and wanted to promote the creation of more such art
• We found the playful energy of kids in this age range infectious

Why This Game?

• We wanted to design a game that fit in with our team values while still primarily addressing the values and needs of our direct stakeholders
• This game fits in with our "Openness to Change" philosophy and our preference for non-competitive experiences of exploration, self-expression/self-determination, and discovery
• The Create-A-Critter game fits in with the large wooden tree that is already located in the children's creative play area and that is decorated with children's artwork
• This game creates a hybrid experience where the physical world (the children's drawings) intersects with the digital/virtual world, thus fulfilling one of the requirements of the assignment
• Minimize focus on technology by integrating the outside environment in creative play

Why Children's Drawings?

Why These Values?

As part of our theoretical background for value in games/valuable games, we participated in a values workshop. We discovered that our team values fell squarely in the "Openness to Change" wedge of Schwartz's motivational continuum of values, with a strong secondary contribution from "Universalism" (Schwartz et al., 2012). The games we developed during this course tended to focus on individual exploration, rather than individual achievement, with the goal of provoking thought or connections (e.g. with others or with nature or both).

As described in the section on our development process, we took an iterative approach to our design, following the double diamond approach. We also kept in mind the principles of Value Sensitive Design as we worked on our game, meaning that we strove to consider "human values in a principled and comprehensive manner throughout the design process" (Friedman, Batya et al., 2003). We employed the tripartite approach of conceptual, empirical, and technical investigations into our development process, considering our team and stakeholder values when making any decisions. Value Sensitive Design is an iterative process, so we checked back with our stakeholders as our project took shape, to try to ensure that decisions were not made solely on the basis on what the team valued or on the technical capabilities of the team.