My Contributions

As Lead Researcher I contributed…

• During pre-production, I conducted and synthesized a literature review on relevant domain topics and presented to team leadership. I used affinity diagramming to identify categories of educational content from the original board game. Using these categories, I made sure that the domain knowledge in the game aligned with our funders’ goals. I mentored the Research Team to use the transformational framework to identify wanted transformations and anticipated barriers.

• During production, I ran focus groups with our target population to identify topics for character design, including their characteristics and narrative. Throughout production, I collaborated with the design team to ground design decisions in our foundational theories.

• After initial release, I ran a quantitative study to see if Bloomwood’s design successfully increased player’s health self-efficacy. I am currently running a qualitative study to see if players are able to take the perspective of non-player characters.

As the Producer during production, I kept the project on track and within scope. I supported the team by holding regular Lead meetings and communicating our shared vision in full team meetings.

As a Game Designer I contributed…

• During pre-production, I generated game designs based on my insights from the literature review and the transformational framework. Upon deciding a game design with team leadership, I defined core mechanics with the pre-production Design Lead and formalized the core loop. I collaborated with the Design Lead on delivering a pre-production design document. Using our foundational theories, I identified the role of the player character and defined their relationship to non-player characters.

• During production, I used wireframing to develop the conversation framework between the player character and non-player characters. Based on the self-efficacy framework, I identified the need for the unique solve-quest interface. I designed the character Mrs. Lee.

• After initial release, I playtested multiple versions of the solve-quest screen in a paper prototype for the research version of the game.

As a Narrative Designer I contributed…

• During pre-production, I created a research-backed framework for the non-player characters quest responses. (Proud to say my framework is also used by a project that is currently hush-hush :) I created comprehensive spreadsheets for our character designs and a system to confirm sufficient coverage of our funders’ domain knowledge for each character.

• During production, I used the results from focus groups, literature review, and my personal experience as a Korean-American, to develop the entire character Mrs. Lee who was then used as a model for the rest of the four characters.

• After initial release, I communicated with our funders’ DEI review team and addressed their feedback.