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School has been hitting me harder than I imagined. I barely have time to work on thesis this semester and that’s not a good thing. I need to reorganize my time and figure out a schedule that allows me to spend a good chunk of time on thesis while not neglecting other things. Next semester should be better for me as I have less classes but I am not holding my breath about it.

I’ve begun to model assets for the game. Late, I know, but better than never. I have a game controller working with the build (or at least the main part of the game) which is a nice bonus. Most of my time for thesis gets put into research and writing reports or the like. While I know these are important and are supposed to help me in the long run, it’s annoying. I need to focus on other things and instead I’m reading and writing, not making.

On the 28th, I went to Aging 2.0 – a conference about new technologies in the field of elder care. I was suggested to go to this by one of my professors, Dr. Martha Ladly after she heard my Greenlight presentation. The conference was really quite interesting and the technologies and services being developed for elder care and independence are ingenious. They were a nice mix of giving back independence to those who are at risk to lose it and a way to make the aging process more enjoyable.

Unfortunately, none of the technology really could help my thesis as it is an extremely personal one. Were my thesis to be more about helping people with Alzheimer’s “recover” or deal with the disease better, than perhaps it would be useful. Likewise, if it dealt directly with methods on how to give care to those with the disease, then one or more of the technology presented may have had a concurrent purpose with mine. However, as my thesis deals with personal stories, it can only indirectly help those who have gone through similar experiences and perhaps help those people cope with the experience.

Dr. Ladly has been making me think about who my target audience is and whether my thesis has a broader audience appeal. I realize that my target audience should be people who have lived similar experiences but it’s hard to target them as the stories are personal and therefore may not be relevant to others. I should look into whether That Dragon, Cancer had a target audience starting out or whether it was created to express a family’s story.

This is a powerpoint of my Greenlight presentation for my thesis. The thesis has not changed much from last year, but is scoped to be more manageable.

Initial Research Presentation

School has started again and with it, back to thesis. Over the summer, I had begun work on my thesis but eventually got side-tracked until when I came back, I realized I had planned the game structure out wrong. Due to this, I am behind on where I had expected to be by now but that is ok. I am excited to be getting back into the swing of making the game and with school back in swing, I’ll be able to focus on it that much more.

I had started out in the summer revving to start on my thesis and I did. I started to code the movement, the menu, I learned about player preferences, I even did research into the layout of the nursing home and got pictures of everything. What started out strong quickly fell by the wayside as work became my priority. The good thing about this is that coming back to it, I can see what the flaws in my original plan were and I can integrate newer strategies to make it better now. I still have all the pictures and plans, so now it’s just a matter of using them. I didn’t really take a step back on my progress, I sort of just took a step to the side instead.

The scope of my thesis is quite large however. After creating a quick gantt chart (which I’ve never done before), I realized how much work is necessary even though I know I haven’t listed everything necessary yet. I knew the amount of work was going to be a lot but until you plot and map it out, you don’t really comprehend the full enormity of it. As such, I think it would be more prudent to focus on one or two stages (read: memories) instead of all of them. This way I can show the difference between two memories from different stages in life as well as make the narratives that much stronger by taking my time on them.