Persona Profile: The birth of Sarah Kropp

On January. 8th, 2009, 17-year old Sarah Kropp was born and introduced as our intended persona for the entire class term. Like taking care of an infant, our jobs as casual game designers is to develop a casual game that would necessitate and satisfy the needs of our Sarah. In her profile, she mentioned two goals for us to take into consideration:

1) To have fun
2) Create an informative game about UW

Sarah is definitely not new to the casual gaming world, so we are dealing with an individual who is highly experienced and familiar with the basic 2D game concepts. So at least we know where she stands as a gamer.

As a prospective student who desires to study Engineering at UW, it is no wonder that she is looking for new games that are fun to play, but at the same time, something that she can "take home" from it. Engineers like to question the "backstage" features of a game, and they are always finding ways to improve concepts. Unfortunately, our young avid gamer is not impressed with what she has seen so far with the games she has encountered. To take caution, she presented us with her concerns:

-Too many words, therefore, too preachy
-Lack of gameplay, basic fun
-Too informative and quiz-oriented = ruins game quality

This will serve as our guiding points when creating our casual games in collaboration with the University's Virtual Tour. She's really looking forward to seeing what we have in stores for her, so let's do our best!

Good luck everyone!
- - -
When having our persona discussion in class last week, we had to brainstorm ideas of keeping Sarah involved 24/7. Great ideas that were shared in class:

-Having a cardboard cut-up of Sarah and bring her to every class
-"WWSW" (What Would Sarah Want) bracelets
-Set up a Facebook account on her behalf
-Set up her e-mail account

My team (Kamil and Michael) generated...

-Having a "Sarah centerpiece" that would consist of a collage of her interests and dislikes. Kamil mentioned covering the centerpiece with colourful sticky notes with "Sarah approves" written on it, so whenever we need her final say on something (and she approves of it) we will take a sticky note and place it on our meeting agenda or some sort of paper document that certifies her approval
-Creating a time capsule
-Make customized "Team Sarah" t-shirts (and wear it to every class)

That's all for now, feel free to spew your thoughts.

Game on.
-ak