Transmedia Experience | Macro UX | Week 1

Brief

Design a transmedia experience that rallies people on urgent social cause where the voices of underrepresented groups are expressed

Timeframe

5 weeks | 02.02 – 09.03.2023

Teammates

This week only, a team of 10 people (02.02 – 09.02.2023) 

Cyrus (Xiyuan) Han, Lingjia Fang, Jacob Prufer, Mansi Chottani, Mila Tawil, Marty (Kuan-Ting) Chen, Reagan Bbengo, Romit Khurd, Sushil Suresh

Before you dive into the behind-the-scenes journey I would recommend visiting the case study page for a comprehensive summary of the project.

Development

Getting limited by the provided materials

We requested additional materials and received scripts that were well-written. However, they were already finalized and left little room for us to explore alternative approaches. 

I shared the same opinion as my team, that their briefs were limiting. However, I must also admit that I am not particularly interested in the topic of climate change, nor do I see it as an immensely urgent cause.

Opening up the brief

Therefore, we interrogated the brief provided by our lecturers, seeking areas where we could break out from the limitations of the provided materials and exercise creative freedom.

This resulted in expanding our scope and even considering different topics that could better meet the brief’s requirements but also align with our interests and creative vision.

Challenge: working as a big group

In order to make progress on the project as quickly as possible and accommodate everyone’s availability, I took the initiative to organize and create online meeting rooms for this week’s meetings.

To ensure that everyone had a voice and the opportunity to contribute, I made a conscious effort to give those who spoke less the space to express their opinions on what we were discussing. However, I encountered some challenges with team members who were shy or had language barriers that made it difficult for them to participate fully.

I realize that I could have better accommodated these challenges by using tools with captions and facilitating the meetings more effectively. For instance, I could have guided struggling team members with questions to help them catch up and provide their input.

Splitting up into two teams

Although we received advice to form teams based on objective criteria such as skillsets and areas of skill development, we were primarily focused on selecting a topic. 

The open-ended nature of the brief made it challenging to form teams, especially since not everyone shared the same level of passion for Climate Change. 

Despite these challenges, our team was able to successfully balance out our skill sets in the end.

Reflection

Overall the first week was not as productive as we hoped it be. The sooner to split the team, the better.