26/09/2025- 23/10/2025 (Week 1-Week 5)
Lizzie Tanaka (0362065)
Collaborative Design Practice | BDCM | Taylor's University
Task 1: Proposal
LECTURE
Week 1
Mr. Shamsul briefed us on the task and we divided into groups. We had a
chance to see the game we chose and played it.
Week 2
This week onwards, our classes were weekly consultation.
INSTRUCTIONS
This semester's task is for us to redesign a tabletop game that has been
created and designed by UI/UX students last semester. Out of two choices,
Gluconomy and Sugar High, our group chose
Sugar High. Our group consists of 5
members:
- Edita
- Pricillia
- Lizzie
- Jessie
- Tracy
For task 1, we are to create the proposal by doing research on our target audience
through interviews and creating user personas. On this week, together with
the briefing, the game creators also came to our class and presented the
game. We also played the Sugar High game with the guidance of the game
creators.
Fig 1.1 All game elements
After understanding the gameplay, we also inquired the game creators about
the creative direction they had in mind and their target audience. We
learned that their target audience is 13-21, as it is an educational card
game and the creative direction they had in mind was a playful, fun, and
bubbly to appeal to the wide range of their target audience.
A. Empathize
With this, we started our research and our proposal. We divided tasks
between the 5 of us, with some doing the creative direction and some doing
the research part. Through the gameplay we had and seeing the lo-fi
prototype, we learned that Sugar High is essentially an
educational card game that aims to teach the players how sugar is
used in our body, integrated in a competitive table-top game. The game
teaches players how they manage Sugar, Glycogen, and ATP in the midst
of the game where there are sabotages from other players.
Fig 2.1 Game research
We also concluded that the card design holds an important part of the game
as it needs to be engaging, interesting, and is simple enough to be quickly
understood by the players. Since the current design is a lo-fi prototype,
our group aims to redesign it and bring the game to life through our
design.
Target Audience
We settled our target audience age to be 14-21, which are teenagers to
young adults who has an interest in tabletop games. We considered teenagers
who will be introduced to this topic, however, they might also think the
rules are too complicated. As for young adults, they might be fine with more
complicated rules.
Fig 2.2 Target Audience
User Persona
After we played the game, we listed down the strengths and weaknesses that
we noticed and moved on to making the interview questions. We made sure the
questions covered insights on their gaming frequency, habits, preferences,
as well as design preferences. And from three interviewees, we created three
user personas.
Fig 2.3 Interview and Persona
And from this, we were able to create our empathy map, as shown
below:
Fig 2.4 Empathy Map
Problem Statement
Once the empathize stage is done, we decided on a problem statement as
shown below:
Fig 2.5 Problem Statement
B. Ideate
Simultaneously with the research, we also worked on the Ideate stage
by drafting our mood board, typography, color palette and logo drafts.
Mood board
Our main creative direction is fun, vibrant, playful. We wanted to
incorporate this into our designs, illustrations, typography,
packaging.
Fig 3.1 Moodboard
Typography
For the typography, I had also explored a bit based on the idea and we
ended up settling on a bubbly typeface for the headings and titles and a
sans-serif rounded typeface to keep the bubbly, friendly tone to our designs
even in our paragraph texts. We wanted our typeface on the body text to be
legible, readable, and accessible while also retaining that fun
effect.
Fig 3.2 Typography
Color Palette
Based on our creative direction and our user persona research, we decided
on this color palette below as it has vibrant colors that are suitable for
the ages of our audiences as well. The colors are contrasting and bright
enough that it would attract people. Out of three drafts, we chose the most
vibrant one:
Fig 3.3 Color Palette
Logo
We also drafted logo sketches and finalized on one logo design.
Fig 3.4 Logo
Our logo is inspired by the chemical structure of glucose, which is a
hexagon. We wanted to incorporate this shape into our logo. For the
wordmark, we settled on a bubbly, custom typeface to ensure it has a
friendly and fun tone to it.\
Card Design
We managed to sketch a few ideas on the card shape and layout. Primarily,
we wanted to use the hexagon shape to stay consistent with our
logo.
Fig 3.5 Card Design
Mascot Design
Other than these, we also started to draft our mascot design.
Fig 3.7 Game Mascot (Week 3-4)
Fig 3.7 Game Mascot (Week 5)
Miscellaneous
We also drafted on icons for the resources and icons for the type of
cards.
Fig 3.8 Icon for resources
Fig 3.9 Icon for card types
C. Final Presentation Slides
After all these, we had to present our proposal slides on week 5. We
compiled our insights and our ideation into one slide.
FEEDBACKS
Week 3
- More exploration for logo
- Settle on the creative direction as soon as possible so can show to client
Week 4
- Prepare interview questions to finish empathy map
- Currently the mascot looks a bit scary and somewhat similar to Spongebob. Try redesigning the silhouette and shape and the facial features.
Week 5
- Remember to reflect the game as well, don't focus solely on the interview answer to finalize the style.
- Explore more about the hexagon shape from the sugar structure.
- Rethink the mascot design
- Rethink the card shape as it can be less durable and not as comfortable to play with
REFLECTIONS:
Overall, I'd say this stage of this project is interesting as I get to understand the game better and deeper. From the gameplay rules to its purpose and the target audience. It helps me see the game from a third-person perspective, from all the interview, insights.
It's also interesting for me to play a game that fellow students have created, though it was confusing at first. Nonetheless, I am quite excited and I look forward to the design execution of our game so it comes to life.
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