Week 1 Progress: 1/22 - 1/29

My goals for this week started out with wrapping up the research segment of the project before really diving into the actual creation and testing of the game. Access to the document used for this week is here, but otherwise the goals consisted of:

This is meant to help me finalize the research stage so I can fully move on to the development stage. The sources provide great background research to help my project stand apart from other games as well as a strong foundation for a successful game catered to them.

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Goals:

• Finalize why your project is set apart from the other games that already exist

• Decide if you are going to focus on a specific part of a child's life or just adolescents goal completion and habit formation in general / personal life.
  

I have decided not to focus on a specific subsection of an adolescent life because it is important to include a variety of different well-rounded and exciting goals in order to get adolescents excited about learning, goal completion, and habit formation. So, my game is set apart from the other goal completion / habit formation games because it has a specific focus on adolescent behavior and specific focuses to allow them to be successful in goal completion and habit formation. Most games with this topic decide to focus on a majority audience but may be forgetting that adolescents have different brain chemistry and wiring from adults that allow them to experience the world differently. They are learning new things which get them excited about rewards and we need to make games that are accessible, fun, and easy to understand for them as well. Not only that but my game will also focus on a local social aspect which is another key aspect for quality adolescent goal completion and habit formation. You will get the chance to see how your peers, and family are doing , which could be encouraging for the older age group. It is important to me that I include something exciting for everyone in all the age groups (early, middle, and end) in the adolescent category.

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Goals:

• Include research on at least 6 (5) different sources on how adolescents would be interacting with my game.

I found a variety of documents to support my research linked here. The most important points from my research being:

• Adolescents experience reward perception differently than adult humans, they experience reward anticipation.

  • This is important to my project because it allows me to harness an element that is exciting for the younger half of my age group and implement it. I was thinking of implementing it by having a section of in the reward where you can click it to preview it (either seeing a decoration on the tank, seeing a skin or hat on a fish, etc..)

• Adolescents' need to self efficacy, self-determination, and positive social relationships are why they have goal completion and habit formation (reward seeking) behaviors.

  • This is important to my project because it allows me to tap into all aspects of these things in order to engage the adolescent.

    • EX: self efficacy comes with the feeling of completion

    • EX: self-determination comes with the feeling of completion, but the game can positively comment on the completion of the goal, reassuring the child they have some kind of competence and autonomy

    • EX: positive social relationships can come from the completion of goals by forming the way they interact with their peers, family, society, and media.

      • This could be shown in my app by having a section where you could locally see the completion of all the people you are playing the game with, encouraging positive social interaction and competition for better self efficacy.

• Adolescents find the most rewarding part of the experience to be the positive feedback loop of goal creation and then completion. It helps them build confidence and encourages them to continue to make goals and form them into habits.

  • This is important to my project because it is important to be making something that is actually useful, so we need to have some kind of positive feedback loop.

    • There could be a reward given for the amount of days you have positively tracked a goal.

    • There could also be positive language and reinforcement when you have built up a streak, with the fish saying different things.

• Adolescents are most drawn to exciting things: which includes visually exciting and cartoon-y like stimuli. It is also important to consider the skills and behaviors of each age group when making a game to ensure it is accessible for all age groups (early, middle, and late adolescence.)

  • This is important to my project because it confirms once more that a video game with colorful and simple child-like elements is extremely captivating for adolescents and would be the right thing to do to draw their attention in.

  • Not only that, but it reminds me that the game needs to not only be fun and exciting, but also accessible for someone who is as young as 10 and someone who has a little more of an adult understanding of the world at age 16-18.

    • Each of them are motivated by different things as explained above, so it is important to include a mix of rewards that stimulate all categories.

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Goals:

• Find out where you could get adolescents aged 10 - 16 to potentially test your designs.

It was also important to note that I actually have an example of two adolescents that could test my game: both of my sisters who are 11 and 18 respectively. So, they will each provide a different perspective being that each are motivated by entirely different things. The younger sister will be more motivated by novel and exciting experiences, while the older one may be more interested in social or monetary rewards.

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As far as time management goes, I definitely could've been better about deadlines (again) this week. I ended up completing notes for 5 out of the 6 proposed research documents, but I feel as though I have enough to work with. I am ready to be done with research and excited to start developing. But, I do understand I need to have a strong foundation before I can have an effective game! My goal for this week is to actually use my goal sheet like a checklist and finish a few of them each day.

I integrated the feedback of Annie by chatting with her about what was still missing from my project and how I could successfully move forward. She suggested finding some research about how goal setting and completion for habit formation effects adolescents rather than adults and that would be the key to setting up my game to have a bit more difference and variety from the other ones available. So, I integrated the feedback of Annie by doing just that. There wasn't much I found to be unexpected but I did figure I was going to be late and picked an ambitious number. But I expect to have more at the check-in. I did find it to be cool learning about how reward driven children are and how I can positively channel that to help them focus on goal completion and habit formation for self efficacy. I was especially interested in learning about the differences in reward motivators between the age groups of adolescents as well.