Welcome to Summer Spark 2016! We hope you have an incredible two days of innovating, collaborating, and connectating! The collaborative notes and presenter materials will be available at http://bit.ly/USMSparkNotes16. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Enjoy!
I am going to use the Design Thinking Process (LAUNCH) for the participants to begin the brainstorming phase for designing a mini game for a gamified classroom. Each stage in the Design Thinking Process will be a different level in the game. There also may be some Easter eggs and items that will be earned throughout the process. The first stage is to empathize and immerse the users (participants). There will be some resources to read through and then each participant will think about the last game they played. What elements of the last game they played made that game fun to play? Each partner will interview each other and describe their experience during the empathize and immersion stage. The next activity will be for each user to synthesize the needs and insights gained from the empathize and immersion stage.Then the users will create an avatar for the user they interviewed, The next stage is to define the problem. In a “How might we ……” question. Take what you learned from your user and come up with concise problem statement. After each participant has defined the problem they will be ready to ideate. During this stage each user will use sticky notes to come up with as many ideas as possible in 10 minutes. It will be fast paced and non judgmental. Each person will sketch their top 5 ideas and then share their sketches with the user.Then each person will give feedback on their sketches. Furthermore, each person will take their feedback and sketches and provide one single solution sketch. The next step is to build a prototype of their solution. They will build an actual 3D tangible object to put in their user’s hands that best represents their solution. They will use cardboard, tape, and other craft materials to build their model. The final stage is to test the prototype. Create an experience for your user and present their prototype to their user. Then the users will give feedback on their prototypes. Their feedback will be helpful, specific and kind. We will then share all prototypes to the whole group.
