As a starter for our project, we have engaged ourselves into a concrete design activity. Our team has now turned into a small game design group with a goal of a small completed game for XNA.

The purpose of this side project is two-folded: first of all we are refining and testing our research questions and secondly we are getting deeper into the design thinking processes and getting personal understanding of the possible problems and needs for tools.

We ignited our design project with idea generation workshop and general meeting in Jyväskylä at the end of January. So far, we have come up with several ideas either with GameSpace methods or more natural ways, struggled with unfocused roles in our team, discussed about vision and restrictions and at the moment we are working on one selected game idea.

We are keeping record of our processes in four separate design diaries, where all of us are writing about what we have done, thought and sketched; what kinds of problems we have had and how they are solved as well as how the group dynamics are affecting to the process. Diaries will provide us one form of data collection where different parts of the design process are made visible and explicated. Compared to other data collection strategies, such as interviews and participatory observation, the design diaries will provide us deeper information of the thinking processes and group dynamics. The downside of the approach is that our process is without a financial pressure/motivation and most of us are not experienced designers. Together these approaches are nicely supplementing each other.

As a basis for our work, we are using the guidelines of Owain Pedgley. His view on this method can be read in his article “Capturing and analysing own design activity”.

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