Week 8 Reflection

On Monday, I continued to work on finalizing the dialogue and implementing the battle system into our text-based prototype. Kris and Curtis kept wanting to try it out, but my response was still “soon” since I wanted to finish it first. Meanwhile, they did a great job at creating our slideshow presentation for tomorrow’s visit to Storm Lake and starting an outline for our presentation to CUNY on Wednesday. After I made a couple of changes to the slides, we were all set and ready for the trip tomorrow, and like I said, they soon got to play through the prototype. I had a lot of fun just watching them laugh at the conversations, die in-game, and try to figure out in real-time how to win. It reassured me that the students tomorrow would at least be able to find some enjoyment from the prototype.

The ride to Storm Lake was a long one, so I used the time to practice in my head what I planned on saying because I somehow accepted doing the presentation slides (…I secretly wanted to do it though as a challenge). At one point, we saw a crop duster, and I thought we were done for because it was heading straight for us. But, it flew right above the car, so it was all good. Once there, we began setting up the laptops, the materials for the brainstorm session, and the slideshow presentation. I can’t believe I actually managed to present the whole thing. I talked about who we were, what an REU program is, and the agenda for today’s workshop. Ezequiel then helped in doing an ice breaker by asking each student to say their name, their grade, and their favorite game. Afterwards, they started playing through the prototype. Again, just like with Kris and Curtis, I had too much fun seeing everyone’s reactions as they played through it. I would walk around and offer hints and guidance whenever I saw someone get stuck in battle. I had even found the courage to speak to someone in Spanish to better help them understand what to do for a cybersecurity puzzle (again that sense of liberation showed up for some reason). I know Kris has made it a summer goal to take a picture of me smiling since I would always hide it the moment the camera came out (I miss wearing masks) and she may not believe me, but I saw the phone and still let her take the picture that may end up on our poster. I guess at that point I had too much joy that any worry I had seemingly disappeared. After they finished playing through the prototype and completed the post-game survey, we all got food as we sat down for the focus group interview, which I recorded using my phone. I was tasked with directing the group of students who are either about to go to college for the first time this fall or have experience already in college. Again, I can’t believe I actually managed to run a whole focus group. I had a script to help me guide the conversation and ask certain questions, but I also tried to create my own follow-up questions based on what everyone had said (I’ve never asked so many questions before in a short period of time omg). I also shared some of my experiences with them as I realized they were pretty similar, and considering I’ve been in my undergraduate program for three years, I also shared some advice to coincide with what they believe is important to succeed in college. Overall, I think I didn’t do so bad for my first time, and it didn’t feel too hard either because it actually felt like all the times I sat eating dinner with my cousins who are around the same age as me whether here or in Peru. Because of the deeply insightful discussion, my group ran out of time to delve into the creative brainstorm activity, but overall, I think we each had a really good experience. I’m glad we were all able to meet the Storm Lake students and run the event well, which will serve as valuable research for our poster and paper. Again, I found it sad to say goodbye, but at least I can still remember those I’ve met (I wonder what the last day of the program will be like…).

For the rest of the week, we focused on analyzing the data by highlighting common themes in the focus group transcripts and survey responses. We did this by using the site Taguette and creating a codebook using Google sheets. We also began working through our poster now that we had much of our research. Based on everything we did, I felt that the typical poster layout didn’t quite suit our design research project and that implementing a flow chart could better represent our work. Our grad student mentors agreed, so we’ve been working hard at creating a semi-traditional poster which I think looks great so far.

Besides our research project, we gave a presentation to CUNY students about the work we’ve done so far. I may have spoken a little bit too much, but that’s ok though since we all still did a good job and it will serve as valuable experience for future presentations. We then heard from the CUNY students and their research projects the following day. The ones that grabbed my attention the most were Filip’s research on creating a driving simulation for those with ADHD and Habin’s research on constructing Unity toolkits for artists to create and show their work in a virtual environment. For luncheon lectures this week, we had Holly Oberbroeckling who was once an REU intern at VRAC just like us. I appreciated how she presented her REU research project to give an idea for what it would look like when we begin presenting ours. We also had Beiwen Li talk, and I greatly value the knowledge he shared regarding whether one should go into a PhD. He took us through a decision tree where he asked us three main questions: do you care about getting money right away, care about being judged, and care about receiving immediate reward from your work? Since I answered ‘no’ to all three, I guess going into a PhD program could be an option for me, but I’ll think about that when the time comes.