Successful Milestones

The left side of the following table represents my main goals/objectives of my thesis project. The right side represents the ways I would qualitatively and quantitatively measure the success of each of these objectives at the end of the semester.

GOALS / OBJECTIVES KPI / MEASUREMENT (by the end of the semester)
1. To commemorate, represent, and honor my grandmother, my family heritage, and the memories associated with our family home Qualitative: My family resonated with and had a positive reaction to the experience

Quantitative: At least 50% of participants recognized pieces of Filipino family culture embedded into the experience
2. To create an immersive experience that utilizes virtual objects and spaces to convey a narrative with themes of memory and family history Qualitative: Participants engaged positively with the virtual environment and understood the narrative

Quantitative: At least 60% of participants interacted with the experience from start to finish and had little to no technical difficulties
3. To inspire and encourage people to reflect about their own lives, memories, families, and cultures Qualitative: Participants have some sort of emotional response to the experience

Quantitative: At least 70% of participants made connections to their own memories and experiences while or after engaging with my project
4. To learn how to use Unreal and develop virtual world-building skills Qualitative: I’ve become familiar with Unreal’s features and feel comfortable building a simple environment

Quantitative: 75% of the project is built out by the end of the semester

For me, success at the end of the semester would mean making meaningful progress towards these four goals. I do not expect to have a completely finished and polished project by the end of the semester. But I do hope to have a working prototype that demonstrates the effort I’ve put in to try and achieve my goals.

Things to Think About

What do you want to accomplish?

  • Though I detail my main goals above, I believe that just being able to end the semester with a personal, meaningful, and working project that I made using new creative and technical skills learned through this program will be a huge accomplishment for me.

Who is the audience?

  • My audience is first and foremost my family and myself. But my next target audience would be immigrant families, minorities, and anyone who has had to deal with Alzheimer’s – or the loss of memory or heritage in general.

Who else might care about it?

  • I would hope that anyone and everyone would care about a story like this. As mentioned in my goals, I want to inspire people to reflect on their own lives and how they think about their culture, time spent with family, and the memories they want to keep alive and how – whether through photos, story books, or other objects and spaces that can carry meaning.

What excites you, what inspires you?

  • As mentioned in previous blog posts and presentations, I’ve been very inspired by first person exploration games and environmental storytelling. The details used in games like Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch are what have inspired me the most in thinking about my thesis project. I am drawn to the idea of utilizing environmental details to allow a user to uncover a story while interacting with those different elements. It’s more than just reading about something or being told a story. A user gets to actively engage with, discover, and interpret the experience themselves, and that’s what excites me.

What has changed since you last presented?

  • Since I last presented, I’ve gotten more responses to a survey I sent out to family and friends asking them to reflect on their own family heritage and memories. Their responses will help inform what kind of objects I decide to include in this Filipino home and have provided me with different perspectives on what kinds of objects and spaces hold significant memories and why. Also, given the limited amount of time we have for this summer session, I will be changing my production timeline going forward and focusing on adding interactions to just a few key items that represent my grandma’s memories and the stories that my family home holds.

What I’m Chasing

I would refer back to my original blog post on KPIs as I don’t believe I would make any changes to the rubric I made for myself in regards to what I want, don’t want, and what I’m okay with.

Additional rubrics:

Things My Thesis Does for the World Things My Thesis Does for Me Things My Thesis Does for My Family
introduces a story about Filipino immigrants dealing with loss (of memory, heritage, history, the way things used to be…) helps me learn more about myself and where I’ve come from keeps my grandma’s memories alive and preserves the memories of our shared home as we begin to clean it out
provides a new way of engaging with family stories teaches me more about storytelling, world building helps them grieve, heal, and cope with change

Updated Timeline

  • May Week 5: Finalize story and narrative elements/assets
  • June Week 1: Program interactions
  • June Week 2: User testing, debugging
  • June Week 3: Continued user testing; finalize details, output, and documentation
  • June Week 4: Final adjustments, presentation