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SCHOOLCRAFT
A game-changing simulation gaming experience to evolve MBA students' life at MIT by learning decision making
Overview
Ongoing Project for MIT Sloan School of Management
Nov. 2022 - Present
Role
Sean Huang
(Producer & Design)
James Sun (Engineer)
Riley Shu (PM)
Yvette Kong (Analyst)
Contribution
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Primary Market Research
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UX Research &
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Full-stack Design
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Game Design
Skills & Tools
Adobe Creative Suites
AI | Midjourney
Figma
Unity
Trailer | 70 sec
Demo Video | 4.5 min
Interactive Prototype
Key Features
Customizable Storylines
Inclusive Avatars
Co-design & Outsourcing gaming elements
Impacts & Updates
$5K Funding
We got an award from Sloan and convinced the admission office to kick off the very first baby step of developing a playable MVBP centering around new students orientation!
Process
This project ended up with way more trials and takeaways aside from human-centered design (e.g., game-level design, content strategy, UX writing, pitch, etc.).
Research
Background
Pursuing MBA is expensive, and two years seem a bit short for all excitement of MBA life. From admission to graduation, something more crucial than academic learning to students is the cultural legacies and inspirations about life from one another of the business school community. However, such content that could have been marketable and impactful is often vocal-based and hardly collected and documented for further use.
"
Two years passed so fast. Things seem not going as I planned and I'm not quite sure whether I could get what I wanted after graduation.”
"
I wish I could have known this earlier…”
"
You learn from talking to people about different ways of living.”
Analysis
User Journey
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Key Insights
For students, they expect every single buck and minute they spend on MBA to count, by accessing more resources that nail their pursuit, eye-opening inspiration and better connection with cohort.
Resources
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Academics
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Entrepreneurship
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Cross-departmental events
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Student-led events
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...
Inspiration
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Personal growth
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Professional experiences
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...
Connection
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general social connection
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For special purposes
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...
How might we help uplevel MBA candidates’ two-year experience with resources, inspiration,s and connections?
Design
Ideation - D.F.V.
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Ideation - Positioning
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Information Architecture
-------------------- The Following Content To Be Updated Soon ---------------------
Content Design
"What are we GAMIFYING?" Is it the orientation, the two-year MBA experience, or a particular scenario at Sloan? Our content journey began with a comprehensive overview of the two-year Sloan experience, delving into the topic of DECISION MAKING to assess the potential for future sub-topics. We've taken a deep dive into understanding our users' daily journey through eight mutually-exclusive and holistic perspectives, based on the science of happiness.
Some past MBA gamification projects depicted MBA lives as nothing short of fabulous and gorgeous. The ugly truth is - MBA also stands for Master of Beating Anomalies. Learning from past MBA gaming fiascos, we've pivoted towards two new perspectives that go against the grain of traditional business-based MBA programs:
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Artistic and creative storytelling and elements that ignite the imagination;
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Nothing but a hilariously playful tone that makes learning fun.
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An expected trajectory of MBA life
The ugly truth is...
Fast Prototyping
Home page UI
Tags for each section of 8 categories at the bottom right
Personal Info
Customization through a pie chart
Bidding UI
1000 points in total to allocate between 8 categories with sub-sections to fill in
Gaming Events
Events that simulate real-life scenarios and offer multiple choices for decision making
Backpack Page
The space for collecting all the tools, elements, purchases, and other stuff in the game, with a blurb of their features
Report
A pie chart & bar graph view for users to review their performance in terms of decision-making tradeoffs
Usability Testing
After a quick round of testing, we centered around making several iterations on 1) Avatar Customization 2) Bidding Process 3) Gaming Scenarios and 4) UX details.
Key issues raised in the testing involved:
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How did SchoolCraft represent Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in cohesion with Sloan's values?
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How could users better allocate the weight between 8 categories?
1. Avatar Customization
Before
After
A pixel-perfect granularized level of avatar customization that truly honors diversity, from race to gender to culture, while considering all in our Sloan family was unnecessary for the gamification itelf.
Instead, a collection of limited numbers of non-human figures (e.g., gender-inclusive and cultural-inclusive beavers representing MITers) with a certain level of customization (e.g., simple make-up customization) suffice for this game.
Before
There was overlapping parts between a user's MIT Goal and personal goal. Additionally, allocating a pie chart without indicating the delta quota between each category (e.g., users had to calculate a sum of 100% by themselves) was annoying.
After
After iteration, the allocation interaction was designed as a slider experience on tubes marking the limitation quota for each category. Users won't do the sum calculation by themselves. Instead, they can see a flask showing 0% representing the completion of allocation.
The bidding process was designed to allocate a player's priority and concentration among the eight category so that the system will suggest customized content that is algorithmized upon their allocation.
2. Bidding Process
Before
Walking through the detailed sub-categories under each category and repeating such an experience eight times was time-consuming. Also, giving too much transparency under each category (i.e., users will foresee what events might happen in the following chapters) made players less engaged.
After
Like allocating the 8 category under the Avatar Personality Customization section, players will only be asked to make a high-level 1000-point bidding for eight genres, with the flask showing the delta quota.
Real life is complex. Some events will have immediate impacts, while others won't. Testing the gaming scenarios helped us granularize the scenarios into 3 genres:
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Single choices simulating the events that have immediate impacts;
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Long-term quests mimicking the events that seem implicit at first but will impact players' experiences in the long run (temporary giving-up is available);
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Surprises representinhg all shocks, surprises, or unexpectations that players have no right to escape.
3. Gaming Scenarios
Before
Previously, each individual is linked to another with one of the three options of the event. That said, it overlooked the other two scenarios:
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people don't want to make decisions on the spot and instead require a cushion of time;
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some events won't allow people to make choices but rather to accept unconditionally.
After
After iteration, the decision-making was granularized into three levels to mimic three genres:
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A. Single choices (mandatory to choose one from three)
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B. Long-term quests (temporary giving-up is an option)
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C. Surprises (no choices but to accept, like a Dice-Time)
4. UX Details
Before
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Too many tags with unnecessarily detailed info on the home screen for users to digest
Before
There was very limited space for previewing items with a short scrolling bar. Also, the space for the description of an item was a bit too unnecessarily large.
After
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An overview of the users' current allocation between 8 categories and their milestones along the whole journey suffices for decision making
After
More space was provided to showcase & preview the player's achievements and simplified info for each item saved their time for learning each item. Also, tags of various genres of items were integrated to provide a faster check-out for players.
-------- Final UI & Visual Design & Reflection Parts To be updated soon--------
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