Capstone - Mentor Feedback
Mentor Feedback - Christy Bozic
Our first mentor meeting was held with Dr. Christy Bozic. Pulled from our implementation plan:
“Christy Bozic is the Faculty Director of Undergraduate Engineering Management and Professor of Engineering Management. Her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with research emphasis on student-centered, active learning environments in engineering education along with her interest in curriculum development in the area of Innovation Management and Engineering Entrepreneurship makes her an ideal mentor for us. Our engagement with her up to this point includes weekly check-ins since initial project conception. She has offered feedback regarding narrowing down our problem and solution, as well as connecting us with another potential mentor.”
Having met with her several times in the Fall semester, we were excited to update her on the current status of the game. The meeting began with an explanation of what the game play and rules were and the fact that we pushed the game from beginning the first week of school to the third week of school in order to end the week before spring break. She agreed that made the most sense, and proceeded by asking “What is your immediate need?” before going any further. The biggest thing we needed was feedback on was how to increase user engagement. She offered some helpful pointers, including:
Share the prize for the week at the beginning of the week. She was wondering what influenced our decision to keep prizes a surprise, and we realized there wasn’t an exact reason.
Try changing up the number of challenges and level of commitment per challenge. Possible options could be to go down to three big challenges, or reduce challenges by one each week as we get down to week six.
Research how users react to different challenges and see if some are more popular than others.
This project being positioned as an experiment, we knew going into it that we would change things up week to week depending on real feedback and cues from those involved. Based on Dr. Bozic’s advice, we decided to shake things up moving forward and test out sharing the next prize as well as reducing the number of challenges for this next round.
The next biggest point that was touched on was the role Discord has been playing in the game. This past week we encountered someone that was picking apart the game and making rude remarks on the chat platform, and to our surprise, the other players began to stand up for the game and comment back. We questioned if it would make sense to defend our process and acknowledge these comments, but Dr. Bozic brought up the question “What was the reason for having a Discord in the first place?”
We remembered the intention for Discord to be used as a place for information to be shared and users to convene. Therefore, we had our answer: hands off of Discord. No need to respond when there are other users that are actually showing that they are understanding the intention of the game through their replies. Discord serves as a great feedback mechanism, and Dr. Bozic even mentioned there could be an opportunity to prompt discussions by asking guiding questions such as “How did everyone feel about round 1 challenges” etc.
Dr. Bozic was very excited to hear about the latest updates and even mentioned she wanted to keep tabs on the site herself. She is looking forward to meeting with us again in a few weeks for a final update. We would like to seek her opinion on an ideal way to gather and portray the research side of this experiment, which is an area Dr. Bozic has experience in.
Mentor Feedback - Ryan Lee + Austin Kilgore
Our second meeting needed to be with someone non-CU affiliated. We chose to speak to Ryan Lee and Austin Kilgore, two dedicated players and winners of the game Reality Ends Here. This game was a huge inspiration for us when we began creating After Hours, so it was interesting hearing their thoughts on our process after having been through Reality Ends Here. Both of them are also creatives that have plenty of experience crafting and networking both through and outside of their experience. After running them through the current status of the game, including an explanation of what the game play and rules were and the fact that we pushed the game from beginning the first week of school to the third week of school, they offered several points of feedback:
Maybe offer opportunities to increase the point value of a given challenge. Like for Challenge 6: if they go to the art walk in Santa Fe and post an image on instagram, they get 50 points — and if they include it in a Challenge 3 meme, they get an additional 25 points.
As time goes on, maybe make the challenges more difficult or time sensitive to drive competition. For example: you don’t just make an instagram boomerang of the local museum, but the first one to post a selfie of a specific work at the museum gets extra points.
If the goal is to encourage collaboration between students, maybe make the challenges require multiple people. So far, seems like all the challenges could be completed by someone going solo (with the exception of Challenge 1).
What exactly are the prizes? What kinds of things are they going to be?
You should actually keep prizes unknown and a surprise, but announce what they are at the end of the week. The reason why:
If I knew what it was instantly, I would know whether or not I wanted or valued it
If I wasn’t interested, I wouldn’t do it
If it could be anything, I’m forced to always do it
Your challenges are approachable, fun, yet they lack a tier that is truly challenging. Yes, it challenges someone to do something, but you should also design for super-users.
People that are making the most of this opportunity should be awarded. There can be a “best of” of the week whether its decided by you or by the users. It would be interesting to feature a single one per week, no matter what the challenge was.
I don’t know how much hard work this would be, but it would be great to click on the leaderboard and see what each person has made.
Feature their stuff on your instagram! Write up some hashtags and grow the community past just CU kids.
All of these thoughts and suggestions got us really thinking about the steps we can take these upcoming weeks. As this was intended as an experiment, we knew we would be constantly iterating and trying new things. This feedback gives us plenty of ideas to test and implement.