COMING FALL 2022

DESIGN CONCEPTS AS OF SPRING 2022

Martin PowerPoint

GAME DESIGN PROOF OF CONCEPT

A small “proof of concept” location-based app with augmented reality has been created by Capital One in partnership with talkSTEM with a goal of providing rich and innovative walking tours to students on the Capital One regional headquarters campus in North Texas. This app, as well as existing walkSTEM videos of math-focused walkSTEM stops across the city of Dallas, provide preliminary versions of the game and gameboards used in our pilot work. These will be our starting point. Our development approach will be participatory design, which is “a highly-facilitated, team-based process in which teachers, researchers, and developers work together in defined roles to design an educational innovation, realize the design in one or more prototypes, and evaluate each prototype’s significance for addressing a concrete educational need”.

Rather than teachers, informal educators and learners will be involved. The design will follow a client-based specification, and we will create technical and general design specs that detail the expected features, key outcomes, and constraints. Following a client kickoff where stakeholders are shown the project plan, we will flesh out the architecture and user experience flows using an agile-based design-build-test loop. Once the game reaches minimum viability, we will lock features and stabilize via quality control, and then perform a short after-action review to vet earlier assumptions and record the current pipeline, noting any issues that need to be corrected.

The backend system will be hosted and maintained in the cloud and will host multi-tenant data and all users’ data. It will also be responsible for applying the processing and the correlation of data across the application. The game will be cross-platform for iOS and Android. The logic and information displayed in the game will be powered by APIs developed in the backend system, which will provide consistency and functional separation. This will enable scalability in terms of functionality and make it easier to add functionality. The developers will create use case scenarios to test expected bounds of the current model of capabilities and stress-test upper limits.

For app capability test deployment, we focus on usability by exposing test users external to the primary development team to use case tests. The game will follow Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.1/2), and will include both English and Spanish versions, given that many families in the metroplex are Emerging Bilinguals. Like other learning games the Guildhall has developed for large-scale use, the game will be built to be intuitive to use with minimal technical knowledge required by facilitators at informal learning sites. There are four ways students can gain points and advance in the game:

Answering questions about a “professional” video (i.e., a short, place-based video produced by talkSTEM centered around a STEM question)
Submitting a #STEMLens photo, posing questions about how math appears in a real world scene,
Creating a new walk stop, with a #STEMlens photo and an answer to the questions posed via text or audio file, and
Commenting or giving feedback on a #STEMlens photo or another student’s walk stop.

WORK PLAN & SCHEDULE

TIME PERIOD

MILESTONES

Fall Year 1

Spring Year 1

Summer Year 1

App Design: Focus groups, design needs document; create initial prototype
Research: IRB approval, conduct Study 1; hold first AB meeting

Training: 3-hour informal educators training; quarterly informal educator meetings

Fall Year 2

Spring Year 2

Summer Year 2

App Design: Prototype user testing; revision and refinement of prototype; AR integration
Research: Disseminate Study 1; conduct Study 2; hold second AB meeting
Training: Two 3-hour informal educators training; quarterly informal educator meetings

Fall Year 3

Spring Year 3

Summer Year 3

App Design: Focus groups and user testing around evaluating submitted walk stops
Research: Disseminate Study 2; conduct Study 3; hold third AB meeting
Training: Two 3-hour informal educators training; quarterly informal educator meetings

Fall Year 4

Spring Year 4

Summer Year 4

App Design: Revision and refinement of game
Research: Disseminate Study 3; conduct Study 4; hold fourth AB meeting
Training: 3-hour informal educators training; quarterly informal educator meetings

Fall Year 5

Spring Year 5

Summer Year 5

App Design: Revision and refinement of game
Research: Disseminate Study 4; conduct Study 5; hold fifth AB meeting
Training: 3-hour educator training; quarterly educator meetings; training materials online

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