Ideation facilitation is an intricate and challenging undertaking. As it requires the knowledge in understanding and overseeing teams, people dynamics, flexibility, adaptability and an area of other soft skills (Dam & Siang 2017), these concepts will enable me to proceed with the development of my digital artifact, which is what I am going to cover in this blog. However, first I would start by talking about my background. I am an everyday gamer that is always wanting to build a sense of equality and respect within the gaming community with regards to females and males within the gaming world. As I am a female gamer and I find it difficult to connect with male gamers while playing on online matches or just having a general conversation with other players.
Furthermore, I feel that the media presents a standard that females do not like playing games, having knowledge about the subject or that women are gamers to earn money or to impress males. So, to aid this issue or stigma around the gaming community, I have decided to create a gaming channel with my partner. We are both female gamers, and we hope to be a welcoming personality to build the interest of females in the gaming community with our content. So, through the following steps of the design process, I will show the thought process of my idea and how I will form this idea to a beta stage.
(d-school – Institute of Design at Stanford, Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE 2010, ‘Design Stages’’ by Hasso Plattner).
STAGE 1: Empathise
“Empathy is the centerpiece of a human-centered design process. The Empathize mode is the work you do to understand people, within the context of your design challenge. It is your effort to understand the way they do things and why, their physical and emotional needs, how they think about the world, and what is meaningful to them (Hasso Plattner 2010).” – Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE
As quoted above the first stage of the design thinking process, as introduced by Hasso Plattner’s Institute of design at Stanford is to empathise. This concept is to enable me to plan for the ideation stage (Hasso Plattner 2010), which is tied in with the observation and researching of my required subject matter, this is done by watching, listening and engaging with your audience (Dam & Siang 2017).
The empathy stage for me was conducted by researching my niche audience (gamers) to become more knowledgeable about my subject matter and to gain invaluable empathy for the audience I am designing my channel for. The informing gathered presented that female gamers do exist within the gaming world, and their numbers have been increasing slowly throughout the years, as it has been shown that the average player is 35 years old (Entertainment Software Association 2017). As women age 18 and older represent a significantly higher portion of the game playing population than boys under age 18 (Osborn 2017). When breaking this information further, the female player is 37 years old, and the male player is aged 33, 41% of gamers are women with the remaining 59% being males (Aja, 2017). Furthermore, 54% of female players say that watching or playing games is better when they can relate to another individual and or YouTube/twitch personality (Entertainment Software Association 2017). Also 66% of females and 34% male gamers say that they watch or connect better to people when wanting to learn more about a game or for a review on a game (Osborn 2017). This research brings in the next stage of the design process.
STAGE 2: Define
“The Define mode of the design process is all about bringing clarity and focus to the design space. It is your chance, and responsibility, as a design thinker to define the challenge you are taking on, based on what you have learned about your user and about the context (Hasso Plattner 2010).” – Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE
The following stage which is quoted above is the Define stage, which focuses on the understanding the extensive research I have gained in the empathy stage. Below is what was gathered:
Users can watch YouTube videos to learn how to get better at a game or discover a game they would like to play from watching my channel, users can connect with their gaming community, female gamers can watch gaming videos on YouTube when they want to hear from people they can relate too, which makes the idea of community stronger by the growth of a female audience and overall enjoyment or learning of new topics by watching my partner or myself play games or react to content on YouTube.
STAGE 3: Ideate
“Ideation is the mode of the design process in which you concentrate on idea generation. Mentally it represents a process of ‘going wide’ concerning concepts and outcomes. Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and getting innovative solutions into the hands of your users (Hasso Plattner 2010).” – Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE
So, as quoted above, the outcomes and or concepts for my process is to: (1) Create a gaming YouTube channel that uniquely combines my partners, and I experience, insights, data and analysis to meet individual developed needs and (2) the formation of a linking twitter account to accompany the YouTube channel and promote weekly content gaining the audience’s attention. (Developing stages below):
Developing stages for Twitter/YouTube account LOGO: Application – Adobe Illustrator:
Developing stages for video making: Applications – OBS, PS4 Remote play & QuickTime player:
#Fist:
Fast: The channel does not consume a lot of time as gaming is a hobby for myself and my partner. Also, the collaborative nature of being a team within the process of creating and promoting the channel helps time management and work overload.
Inexpensive: The channel does not cost any money to develop nor does the twitter. However, they’re some cost of time and editing with programs which affect the expensive of the project.
Simple: The platforms are easy to utilise, the content is straightforward to its audiences/demographic, as the effect that is needed by the users is to click a button or link to find the twitter or YouTube account.
Tiny: By having a small minority of gamers and interested reactors, it makes my project easy to deal with. As I am creating content for a niche, instead of having an overload of content to please all audiences or other demographics.
References:
Aja, R, 2017, Adult women are now the largest demographic in gaming, The daily dot, March 9, 2017, viewed 14 August 2018, <https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/adult-women-largest-gaming-demographic/>
Dam, R, & Siang, T, 2017, What is Ideation – and How to Prepare for Ideation Sessions, Interaction design foundation, July 2017, viewed 15 August 2018, <https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-ideation-and-how-to-prepare-for-ideation-sessions>
Entertainment Software Association, 2017, Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry, Entertainment Software Association, April 9, 2017, viewed 17 August 2018, <http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/EF2017_Design_FinalDigital.pdf>
Hasso Plattner, 2010, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE, d-school, 2010, viewed August 19 2018, <https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/sandbox/groups/designresources/wiki/36873/attachments/74b3d/ModeGuideBOOTCAMP2010L.pdf>
Osborn, G, 2017, Male and Female Gamers: How Their Similarities and Differences Shape the Games Market, newzoo, 3 May, viewed 16 August 2018, <https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/male-and-female-gamers-how-their-similarities-and-differences-shape-the-games-market/>