MINOR PROJECT

26/08/19 - 27/11/19 (Week 1 - Week 14)

Yeap Phay Min (0331073)

Minor Project

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25/08/19 (Week 1)
In the first class, we were introduced to social enterprise, as well as Earthship. Since our minor project will revolve around sustainable homes such as an Earthship, we needed to do some research to better understand what it is all about.

Social Enterprise https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-enterprise.asp

- An organisation with specific objectives and primary purpose
- Maximise both profits and benefits to society and environment 
- Profits used to fund social programs
- Hence, when social enterprise profits, society profits
- Developed in the UK in late 1970s

Earthship https://www.earthshipglobal.com/we-build-earthships
An Earthship is a brand of passive solar, made out of natural and upcycled materials. Earthship also creates a comfortable and cosy living space, and has many benefits to go along with it. 

Earthship Biotecture was founded by Michael Reynolds.

What is Earthship?

- First house built in 1988 in Taos, New Mexico.
- Built to utilise the available natural resources, especially energy from sun & rain water
- Name Earthship based on idea of ship/spaceship, self-sustainable.
- Reuse, Recycle, Reduce
- Maximize usage of materials
- Low impact construction
- Use environment around them to reduce cost

Principles

- Thermal/Solar Heating & Cooling
- Solar & Wind Electricity
- Contained Sewage Treatment
- Building with Natural & Recycled Materials
- Water Harvesting
- Food Production

In addition to that, we were also introduced to Mr Ruben Cortes, who is the co-founder and director. of the organisation Build For Tomorrow. We also learned that he did an Earthship project in Jelebu, Negeri Sembilan.

Build For Tomorrow's website shares a statement that says:
"Build for Tomorrow was launched in 2014 as a response to an identified need for solutions to improve the performance of the built environment. Our mission is to provide sustainable building solutions focused on energy management, renewable energy generation, water management, water sourcing, water filtration and waste water management." 

28/08/19 (Week 1)
In the next class, Mr Ruben Cortes came to our class and presented us an insight of our environment as well as Earthships.

Contents shared with us: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1auHPHbf84whHugUJ68CnOjf7p_aFbcMk

As for our project, our task is to come up with something that is aimed to raise awareness and educate people about Earthships. We were also split into groups, and I teamed up with Adele, Megan, Alicia and JQ. Once we had our groups, we needed to start to think about possible design outcomes we could do. Mr Mike also told us we could start by doing more research about Earthships and how they are currently being promoted to the public. We could also start thinking about our target audience.

Progress Slides:



02/08/19 & 04/09/19 (Week 2)
This week, we continued to work on our target audience as well as some possible design concepts.

Progress Slides:


09/09/19 & 11/09/19 (Week 3)
We tried to search up on our possible visual references for the design outcomes.

Progress Slides:

16/09/19 & 18/09/19 (Week 4)
This week, we had the opportunity to make a visit to a sustainable home that makes use of the concepts of Earthships, known as the Planter Box House which is located in Bangsar.

Progress Slides (Site Visit):

23/09/19 & 25/09/19 (Week 5)
After the site visit, we worked on our game concept through searching up existing games as example and also through brainstorming as a group.

Progress Slides:

30/09/19 & 02/10/19 (Week 6)
This week, we tried to think of strategy ideas for our concepts, and started on our game flow along with the learning outcomes of each activity in the game. At the same time, we worked on our survey to collect more data, and also started to plan our event.

Progress Slides:

We also had to test out our game flow by writing each part of the game in a square sheet of paper, and  testing it on several of our friends. We also pasted up the game flow on a whiteboard to better visualise how it's going to work.

07/10/19 & 09/10/19 (Week 7)
This week, we further elaborate on our event features such as the workshops.

Progress Slides:

Initial Art Direction:


Initial Gameplay:



At this stage, our concepts of game and event is not fully linked well. Hence, we had a big and messy brain dump session by writing it all out on the whiteboard. Doing this helped us better visualise what we needed to do, to make sure everything LINKS!

14/10/19 & 16/10/19 (Week 8)
At this point we were more clear with what we should do, so we continued to work on our event planning, updated art direction and updated gameplay.

Progress Slides (Event Planning):


Updated Art Direction:


Updated Gameplay:



21/10/19 & 23/10/19 (Week 9)
Mr Mike sent us a timeline template that we could make use of, to track of progress and make sure we could get it all done before the submission date. We also started to work on our content for both and website and the game.

Timeline:


Website content planning:


Game content planning:



28/10/19 & 30/10/19 (Week 10)
We continued to work on the visuals for both the game and website, as well as the event applications.

Initial Illustrations:


Initial Website Design:


Initial Event Applications:



04/11/19 - 13/11/19 (Week 12)
Throughout the next weeks, we each continued to work on our designs for each of the concepts.

18/11/19 (Week 13)
Mock Presentation Day! We got to present our outcomes to Mr Mike and receive feedback on how we can improve on it.

20/11/19 (Week 13)
After receiving feedback from the mock presentation day, we spent the rest of the week focusing on making the necessary changes to it.

25/11/19 (Week 14)
On this day, we tried to finalise what we needed to do in preparation for the final presentation on Wednesday.

Final Game Illustrations:


Final Website Design:



27/11/19 (Week 14)
Submission & Presentation Day!

FULL Presentation Slides (w/ Animation & Sound):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sz26e6lKkjf5KCHb_nQ8YazuyVc7QL-h/view?usp=sharing

Presentation Slides (Static: NO Animation & Sound):



PDF of Progress Tracking Document:

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FEEDBACK

25/08/19 & 28/08/19 (Week 1)
The target audience (including the demographics) needs to be clear, and there also needs to be a reasoning for targeting them. This would also help us decide on what we plan to raise awareness about Earthship. Example, social media would be an ideal platform to raise awareness to teenagers.  We also need to keep in mind the core message of the campaign we are proposing. Besides that, we could conduct more research on the Earthships around the world to not only understand more about it, but also observe how it is being promoted to the public.

02/08/19 & 04/09/19 (Week 2)
For the Google Docs, the first few sections are suppose to guide us to develop a project brief. We could also use bullet points to list out the necessary points for each section. Some sections also needed to tweaked and elaborated. As a group, we should start thinking about the needs to reach the outcome of this project. Our target audience of children should also have a clearer age range. The selected ideas also won’t be settled on until the section of empathy is done later on.

09/09/19 & 11/09/19 (Week 3)
For the interviews we planned on conducting, Mr Mike mentioned that our questions should be non-bias so it does not affect the result. Also, too much information on Earthship also shouldn't be given out to the interviewee as it could lead to a bias response. As for our target audience, our secondary target should be parents instead of teenagers. The data collected later on could help guide us with the final outcome of our designs.

16/09/19 & 18/09/19 (Week 4)
This week, we had a site visit in Bangsar to visit a sustainable home known as the Planter Box House. It isn't an Earthship but it implements the concepts of it. A house tour was given to us, and my group also managed to interview Mr Ruben Cortes. The main message we got from his answers was that sustainable living is very achievable, through several concepts.

23/09/19 & 25/09/19 (Week 5)
The secondary target audience of parents is necessary as they are the ones who play a part in being a good influence to their children, and also because they would be the one that downloads the app. To have the connection with the parents, Mr Mike suggested us to have an event. Both initial ideas of game and website should also have a way a connecting to the event. These concepts will also link back to Build For Tomorrow.

30/09/19 & 02/10/19 (Week 6)
In our timeline, we should be specific on what sort of promotion will be done instead of just saying "build hype".  As for our event, we need to clarify the features the event offers in order to attract people to come and join. For the game, each part needs to be justified and it can be done through having a flowchart to explain the game concept. We could also make use of the data we collected from the site visit and implement it in our concepts. Mr Mike also mentioned that having an event is important, as children would not be motivated to take action just by playing the game itself.

07/10/19 & 09/10/19 (Week 7)

This week, Mr Mike advised us to narrow down the crafts we want to include in our event, and have picture references as well as the materials needed. Besides that, we need to look into what can we take from the planter box house into the workshops or into the game. Furthermore, things that studied from the workshop can be shown in the game plus the game flow also should be explored in the workshop like we could put the recipe into the game. In the end, the goal is that we want parents to feel that this is beneficial in education for their kids. Hence why the game and the event needs to be linked with one another.

14/10/19 & 16/10/19 (Week 8)
After showing Mr Mike our illustrations so far, he advised us to move on quicker to avoid falling back. Also, we need to make sure all our designs have consistency based on our proposed art direction. For the event, we need to make sure it all ties back to Earthship and Build For Tomorrow. This could be done through having a mock-up of a sustainable house that makes use of the concepts. To make sure we're on track, Mr Mike also shared with us a timeline template. In class on Wednesday, samples of presentation slides were also shown to us as a reference for our future presentation.

21/10/19 & 23/10/19 (Week 9)
Mock presentation on 18 Nov.

28/10/19 & 30/10/19 (Week 10)
No feedback received, as we just continued to work on our designs.

04/11/19 & 06/11/19 (Week 11)
No feedback received, as we just continued to work on our designs.

11/11/19 & 13/11/19 (Week 12)

Mr Mike left a note in our Google Docs that said "The presentation should begin with the user journey that maps the entire awareness/promo campaign. The flow of the presentation should be engaging and as close as possible to the actual experience from the users’ perspective. Present this journey for the 18th Nov mock presentation. After the user journey, present the objectives, aims, design rationale, campaign timeline etc."

Besides that, we could add music and sound effects to our game. We should do the presentation offline (PowerPoint) to avoid any issues with loading the visuals and gifs on Google Slides during the presentation.

18/11/19 & 20/11/19 (Week 13) - Mock Presentation

After the presentation, Mr Mike said that our project flow is there. In terms of the journey map, he mentioned that it is good to include it. For the target audience, it is better to show real life pictures and highlight the main keywords to avoid it being boring and cluttered with heavy text. Our survey results can be presented one per page, then leading on to the summary. For the website design, more photos and highlighted keywords should be applied. As for the gameplay, the process and the flow of the game should be more clear and elaborated.

25/11/19 (Week 14)
Include a summarised version of the sections above highlighted in red in our presentation slides.

27/11/19 (Week 14) - Submission & Presentation Day

PANEL FEEDBACK

Mr Ruben Cortes:

He mentioned that we missed out on solar energy and natural air cooling. In terms of the characters designs, we were reminded to not forget the insects and not just only mammals. Overall, the design and concept is very relevant to the targeted audience.
Mr Lionel Teh:
He gave a suggestion of making our designs more local based since we are Malaysian designers. As for the gameplay, he suggested that we could actually have characters that guide the users through the game, and each character could represent and Earthship feature.

Mr Darren Leong: 
It would we good if we had a narrative that is able to connect with the characters and the features. We could also place the progression on learning about sustainability. Since games often include achievements, it would be good to have theses progressions as the learning development.

Mr Seamus James: 

We could include Malaysia's iconic animals such as a tapir. We should also slow down the slides during the presentation.

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REFLECTION

25/08/19 & 28/08/19 (Week 1)
My group and I had a clearer image of what is going on with our environment after listening to the presentation by Mr Ruben Cortes. We also believe that Earthship is a really smart and sustainable concept, which makes it sad that it is not widely known. Due to this lack of awareness, we hope we can create something that is able to effectively raise awareness and educate people about this. We started out feeling a little lost but at the end of the our consultation, we had a better idea of what this project is about. Thus, we aim start discussing among the team on possible concept ideas.

02/08/19 & 04/09/19 (Week 2)
We started to write in the Google Docs shared with us, and Mr Mike gave us some feedback on it such as writing them in bullet points. At this stage, we also have a better understanding of the concept of Earthship through our research. The group also agreed on creating design concepts that are online, and not print, as we wanted to have interactive elements to attract our target audience of children. Children nowadays are also more technologically inclined so it would be a fun and engaging concept for effective learning.

09/09/19 & 11/09/19 (Week 3)
To collect data, Mr Mike mentioned that our questions should not be bias so the results will not be affected. So we needed to rethink about our initial questions. We also realised that our design outcome may be different from our ideation now due to the data collected. Instead of e-book, we also started leaning more towards to idea of an educational game. Our group started to download a few educational apps that are targeted towards children and played with them. It also made me realise how much times has changed, and that there are so many online educational games right now.

16/09/19 & 18/09/19 (Week 4)

I fell sick during this week so I couldn't participate in the house tour. Luckily my group members were there to collect data. During the site visit, Mr Seamus gave a tour of the house and talked about the state of the Earth, and that we really need to take action now before it is too late. He also mentioned that a sustainable house has big empty spaces so that the inhabitants has space for social interaction.

23/09/19 & 25/09/19 (Week 5)

After this week's classes, we realised that we were lacking in creating a strong connection between the parents and idea of the game, website and the event. Besides that, we also need to make sure we are on track of our project, and we also need to complete the empathy section on Google Docs.

30/09/19 & 02/10/19 (Week 6)
At this stage, we understood the importance of having a connection/link between our ideation of the game concept, website and an event. Also, our initial idea right now is to have a series of workshops relating back to the concept of sustainable living through the idea of Earthships. We also realised that it would be better if we conducted another survey to collect the parent’s views on their preferences towards workshops. In the end, we realised that producing a game alone wouldn’t be strong enough for people to take action hence why we should come up with an event/workshops concept to go along with the game.

07/10/19 & 09/10/19 (Week 7)
This week, we realised that our art direction should be directing towards one specific visual style. I also feel glad that our group managed to find an existing educational game for kids with flat illustrations and bright colours as well. Besides that I also realised that the game flow did require some changes to it, in order to match it up with our workshops. So that the kids can learn through play then play for real.

14/10/19 & 16/10/19 (Week 8)
This week, we realised that we needed to speed up on our progress, starting with the illustrations to make sure it all matched up together. We also needed to remind ourselves on the main aim of this project, which is to spread awareness and educate about the concept of Earthship and link it back to Build For Tomorrow. Hence why we needed to think about having a mock-up of a sustainable house to wrap up the event.

21/10/19 & 23/10/19 (Week 9)
We noticed that the perspective of our illustrations were not all consistent so they needed to be fixed. The website is also in progress at this stage.

28/10/19 & 30/10/19 (Week 10)
At this stage, we are still on track on our progress which is good. We also needed to make sure that all the colours and style of our illustrations are consistent so everything matches back to our art direction.

04/11/19 & 06/11/19 (Week 11)
We continued to split tasks among each other so that we could work on the animations of our design concepts more efficiently.

11/11/19 & 13/11/19 (Week 12)

There's going to be a mock presentation in Week 13, so we needed to compile everything in a set of slides to present to the class. The order of our contents should also be smooth.

18/11/19 & 20/11/19 (Week 13)
It’s a week before the final submission. So far the group has been on track with what needs to be done which is good. For now, it’s just the minor changes from the feedback received along with some additional content to add into our presentation slides.

25/11/19 & 27/11/19 (Week 14)
And that's the end this module! We got to present our design concepts and receive comments about it. In the end of it all, I was proud and satisfied with my group's outcome as we put in a lot of effort to get it to be how we want it to be. We did have a quite a slow and "feeling lost" start due to us not being able to connect our concept effectively, but in the end we managed to figure that out, and the other progress went quite smoothly with minor bumps here and there. I really appreciate all the feedback received that helped my group have a clearer idea of what we needed to do. I'm also grateful that my group could be on the same page most of the time, and that we could communicate well with each other. After many weeks of hard work, it was nice to see it all come together in the end.