In order to make the handoff to our client as smooth and helpful as possible, we met with Ron this week to discuss where CivRep could go in the future.
The following are the main takeaways we had from our meeting.
Connections
No matter how effective CivRep is at transformations, it cannot achieve anything if nobody knows about its existence. Since neither we nor the client has access to funds for a grand advertising campaign, we’ve begun to list up potential people we could reach out to, starting with a city council member in Pittsburgh that Ralph, our ETC faculty, has graciously connected us with. We hope to share our project with such people in order to gradually create a network of connections that could help CivRep achieve its goal of creating Civically Engaged Citizens.
PLaytest Manual
After discussing with our client and the faculty, we discovered the importance of a playtest manual to go with the playable prototype for our handoff.
Design Iterations
During this week, we also made some further design iterations.
Character Customization
An additional feature we’ve incorporated into our prototype is a character customization feature. In our previous builds, players could only choose a pre drawn portrait to represent them in-game. In our latest build, players have access to a customizable 3D avatar where they can adjust the face, hair, and accessories to build a character of their choosing.
Amendments
One feedback we often got was the players wanted more options beyond Yes and No for each bill. In order to address this, our team introduced amendments to the voting process. In this new iteration, players will be able to vote Yes or No on a series of amendments. We hoped that by opening up more options in the voting section, we would allow players to better express their position on the proposed bill.
