In a UW HCDE course, my team created an interactive game to help students build teamwork skills, blending education and game design for academic and workforce growth.
The HCDE team aimed to replace traditional lectures with an interactive activity to improve engagement and discussion.
The goal was to design an interactive game that creates a fun, engaging learning environment for students and instructors in the HCDE course.
My team and I began our process by reviewing the course material and reviewing academic literature on educational game design.
The course focuses on teamwork principles, with a key theme for the game being “sitting with yourself” and “drawing from your personal well.”
Sitting with yourself
AKA: Your personal Bucket
This idea implies self-reflection:
What is in your well? What and how much can you put in it?
What makes your well unique?
There are so many different aspects and traits related to teamwork! There really isn’t a correct answer (ever).
Sitting with your team
AKA: Bringing your bucket to the team
This idea implies external reflection:
What and how do you add to your team?
What traits are unique to you that can create a supportive environment?
Everybody in a team can offer different skills to ensure collective success!
If you’re interested in seeing a comprehensive overview of the course content, click on the following link:
While there are many exisiting game-design frameworks, my team and I focused primarily on 3 main aspects: mechanics, narrative, and aesthetics.
Building off the course material and game frameworks, my team and I crafted the 4 main pillars to act as the guiding foundation for the card game.
Success in this game isn’t about individual placement; it’s earned as a team.
Teams face challenges based on Tuckman’s stages of group development and must collaborate to devise unique solutions.
Players create "teamwork principles," mechanics based on the course’s key concepts, to overcome challenges.
To emphasize teamwork, each player contributes to the crafting process, promoting collective strategy.
Using our ideation map, my team refined the gameplay to balance learning objectives with fun. This involved multiple iterations, discussions, and quick internal tests to adjust the structure.
My team and I created paper prototypes, refining mechanics and finalizing features to keep or omit.
The prototype below shows a more structured setup that evolved into the final game iteration.
I created the visual designs for all card iterations, focusing on bright colors and maintaining consistent hierarchy and motifs across card types.
These designs were the first main iterations that would be later used when testing the game.
Rounds of Beta testing were conducted towards the end of the academic quarter using low fidelity, paper cards and pieces.
A video recording of one of the tables is available if you’d like to get a preview of the game in action for the first time.
Once the full game was completed in the class, my team and I sent out a survey to the students in order to get comprehensive feedback for futher iterations. Below are some of the questions and results that were recorded after the Beta test.
Following the Beta Test, a smaller test was conducted with just one team and 4 players so that my team and I can get much closer to the action and understand players’ thoughts while playing.
In summary, students found the game fairly enjoyable, with an average rating of 3.9 out of 5. The difficulty received a middling 2.6, likely influenced by the clarity of the rules, which averaged 2.9, indicating some confusion. Relevance to class content was rated 3.9, reflecting a strong connection to the course material.
Participants also provided answers to open-ended questions, which highlighted areas of our game that were positive or could use additional improvements:
While during testing, the cards went through a variety of iterations and designs, I lead my team through the visual development process to come up with the final designs that would go into physical development.
Resource Blue I
#68BBFF
Resource Blue II
#D2EBFF
Challenge Red I
#FF6565
Challenge Red II
#FFD1D1
Principle Green I
#86C844
Principle Green II
#DBEFC7
Shenanigans Yellow
#CA933C
Energy Tokens
These determine how often a player can make a move. Without any energy, as shown by the depleted battery, players are unable to help their team
Cardholder Token
Whoever holds this token is the “week’s” designated player in charge of revealing the Challenge and Shenanigans card. This token will rotate amongst everyone in a team.
Progress Tracker
Teams will keep track of their total points on this sheet, which will help them with final calculations to determine the winning team.
Built off the testing and research results, a finalized rulebook and gameplay guide was created to guide future players through the game.
In a later testing iteration, each set of cards per team would be given a physical, printed copy of the rulebook, which can also be viewed digitally:
A video recording of the structure, rules, and general gameplay of the card game is available below.
Concluding the quarter and the game’s development, my team and I conducted one more round of play testing with a different class of students.
For this round, the players were given newly updated cards, guided through an interactive walkthrough, and also were asked to complete another survey for more insights. Below are some of their final comments and thoughts:
As with any good game, the work is never finished and improvements can always be made. Looking forward, and if given the opportunity, I would love to see this game further developed on a digital platform to reach more students beyond the UW classroom.
And as this game seeks to be implemented into the course, I am excited to see how the game will be received by both students and instructors. And though I will no longer be directly involved with the design process past graduation, I am confident that the game's implementation will add a valuable, fun interactive element to the HCDE department.
