Human Practices Notebook

5/11/11

Millie, Kevin, Candy

First Human Practices meeting! Discussed board game design.

Decided to model our game after LIFE and Monopoly.

Purpose: to educate the public about synthetic biology concepts.

Main Strategy: to move around the board and collect various parts to build one final product.

Goal: to be the first player to make the device.

Also added fun surprises and twists to the game.

Created GoogleDoc to ask for suggestions from MSBT members for our "Chance" cards (cards soon to be titled under a different name).

5/24/11

Millie, Kevin, Candy, Alena, Max, and Josh

Further discussion of the Board Game.

Members brought up new ideas and also discussed old ideas to generate clear understanding of the goals and purpose of the board game.

Researched the partsregistry.org website to look for parts the players could use during the board game.

5/26/11

Millie, Kevin, Candy, Alena, and Josh

I will log in hours for all members in attendance at the Human Practices Meeting

Board Game: Personal notes can be found at the "Human Practices Board Game Design" Google Doc here [1]. We discussed possible board game titles and "chance card" titles, the graphic design, how to create the cards, possible story situations, and a "parts registry bank" (similar to the Monopoly bank).

We also created a rough copy of the board game layout here [2]. Ignore the Pringle man in the left-hand corner haha. He is not part of the board game.

Interviews At the beginning of the month, I mentioned holding interviews to observe a wide variety of opinions from both the public and iGEM members, and our notes can be found here [3]. Feel free to add more questions which follow the format under the headings on the document - we can use all the questions we can. We're going to hopefully get in contact with the Michigan Psychology department and reduce the amount of bias in our questions; biased questions happen, so we want to try and prevent it as much as we can.

6/8/11

Millie, Kevin, Alena, Max, LJ

Interviews We worked on the Google Docs documents and created more Interview questions. We also went over methods to reduce bias of interview questions. See our progress here: [4]

The rough timeline for our project:

June: Finish interviews (6/8) and conduct them until end of June. Then gather data. Board Game – work on graphic design. Finalize storyboard, game rules, and board game layout. Gather material and find means to create “chance” cards (possibly game pieces?) July: Continue conducting interviews. Continue graphic design and finalizing board game technical stuff (rules, gameplay). August: Compile all the interview data and create a visually appealing form of the data. Continue Graphic Design. Mid-Aug: Manually construct the board game and pieces.

6/15/11

Millie, Kevin, Josh, Alena, LJ, Max

Interviews Revised and created final copies of Interview questions Forms A and B. Discussed strategies and procedures of the interviews. Kevin, Alena, LJ, and Max plan to distribute some interviews out during the Ann Arbor Top of the Park event tomorrow evening.

Board Game Added descriptions to playing card items.

6/16/11

Kevin, LJ, Max, Alena

Conducted interviews at Ann Arbor Summerfest. This set of interviews is meant to determine the effectiveness of our questions.

Interview Results Day 1

6/23/11

Millie, Kevin, Josh

Restructured Interview questions and discussed future actions: board game graphics and e-mailing other iGEM teams.

6/30/11

Millie, Kevin, Josh, Alena, Candy

Discussed meeting with M-BIO and M-STEM programs to pitch the Michigan Synthetic Biology Team and also to conduct interviews with the participants.

Rescheduled weekly meeting date: will now be MONDAYS at 6:30 PM. However, since the Monday next week is July 4th, we will be having a temporary meeting on Friday, July 8th at 5 PM.

Also decided on the next interviewing dates: 1. After the Friday meeting, and 2. Sunday, July 10th at 9pm.

Designed template for Board Game cards. Discussed printing efforts and mechanics of the actual board.

7/8/11

Millie, Kevin, LJ, Candy

Worked on Board Game board design.

Conducted more interviews at Summerfest.

7/11/11

Millie, Kevin, Candy, Alena

Briefly discussed results of Friday's interview.

Discussed PR and collaboration progress.

Created a draft of the board game to create more accurate scaling. Formed plans to use adobe programs to create the images of the game.

7/18/11

Millie, Kevin, Candy, LJ

Set dates for next interviewing session: Friday (7/22) @ 4:30 PM, meeting at the Michigan League.

Used adobe photoshop to create graphics for the board game (this is where the bulk of the work for upcoming weeks will be).

7/25/11

Millie, Kevin

Discussed iGEM collaboration progress. Worked on board game graphics.

8/8/11

Millie, Kevin, Alena, Candy

Discussed Brochure idea. Could be used for Festifall, at the iGEM competition, and in general to hand out to people.

Went over projected timeline of the Human Practices project.

Discussed Interviews and Surveys - progress so far and also future work.

Worked on Board Game graphics.

8/17/11

Millie, Alison, Candy, Alena, Kevin, Chris, Ben, Marc, LJ

9:00 AM Teleconference with Team Delft! We introduced our teams and discussed all aspects of our project,: describing the purpose, the methods, and human practices, in addition to troubleshooting each others' problems.

9/7/11

Set up an MSBT table at the Festifall event at U of M. Passed out brochures and spoke with interested students. However, it rained throughout the entire Festifall, so it was not very successful. Considered our last surveying event.

Leading up until deadline

Finished working on survey data and on the board game.

The image of the board game actual board can be seen here: [5]

An unfinished copy of the gameplay manual can also be seen here: [6]