As part of the M.S. Human-Computer Interaction Design (HCI/d) program in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, Masters students are required to complete a year long capstone project. This is an individual project where students either choose to complete a design project or a research project within a chosen problem or opportunity space.

For my capstone project, I chose to complete a design project within the space of gaming. My final design was the creation of an alternate reality game to faciliate Experience Design and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) concepts including collaboration, collocation, awareness, and trust. I wanted to connect people in real life and technology can facilitate that.

Process

My process started out from scratch simply trying to define a problem space of where to begin the project. However, instead of looking at a problem space and iterating over it to find solutions, I chose to look at something I am interested in, gaming, as an opportunity space. I was not immediately looking for a problem to find solutions, but instead I was asking the question, "what can I do within this space?"

When I chose the space of gaming I also knew I wanted to do something with alternate reality gaming. Early on in the project I thought about creating my own alternate reality game. I created sketches, conducted primary and secondary research, and eventually wireframed and mockuped up different iterations of an alternate reality game design using Adobe Fireworks. The design included two components including an online or virtual component which took the form of a website as well as a physical component where players would complete tasks in real life.

Eventually, I conducted usability testing on the different components of the game and finally brought the components together to create and conduct a live game evaluation where players participated in a week long alternate reality game.

Final Concept

My final concept was created using HTML/CSS, Javascript (JQuery), PHP, and MySQL. This allowed me to automate different features and functions as part of the game and store player and game data while providing a unique and interactive experience. The game's story involved a company that was looking to hire a single new recruit. The game lasted seven days where players would be issued game tasks via email, perform the tasks in real life or online - whichever was necessary for the given task - and finally submit information in the form of codes as part of the task in order to receive points. At the end of the game, the player with the most points won.

All capstone projects included a final presentation. The presentation slides may be downloaded here.