An Exploratory Approach to Online Gaming Safety.

This project is ONGOING!

GamerGarten is a video game distribution service, storefront, and social media platform that’s specifically catered towards children, especially those that are new to gaming and the Internet. The platform is essentially like Steam (the world's largest and most popular distribution platform for PC gaming), but with specific affordances and onboarding procedures that allow and encourage younger players to learn online safety in gaming environments while still being empowered to actually participate in and explore these environments.

Users of GamerGarten, called "Gamers", enroll in the service alongside a parental guardian, who creates a "Guardian" account that can filter content and monitor the store and gameplay activity of their Gamer. Gamers can create social media profiles and view and befriend the profiles of other Gamers, and form online friend groups dedicated to online gaming safely together. Guardians can interact with the Guardians of their Gamer's friends to chat about their Gamers shared online activity.

I ideated this project myself in April 2022, by drawing from my own experiences as a lifelong gamer, and with a vision of online safety for younger gamers that is both educational and exploratory. I conducted the background research and competitive analysis necessary to fully ideate this platform. I created functional, high-fidelity mockups for a prototype of the platform, prepared detailed user scenarios, and prepared an initial field work plan for alpha and beta testing. This is perhaps my most complete solo work as a young UX professional thus far, and I am eager to showcase it to interested parties. Please note the copyright notice below before requesting access to the report (must have a Google account with an identifyable email handle).

My roles in this project included:

• Product Designer (came up with original and unique idea, created high fidelity mockups, performed competitive analysis, prepared initial field work plan, designed and created logo),
• UX Researcher (performed background research, prepared user scenarios),
• UI/UX Designer (created multiple screens of high fidelity mockups).

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2023 Sammy Otoo. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution of the ideas, concepts, writings, logos, names and designs discussed and shown are prohibited.

How does a UX Research project lead to a viral short film?

THE BENCH is a 2022 Short Film that premired on 21st April 2022. I was the film's Producer, and I worked alongside Assistant Director/Co-Producer Tessa Haynes and Director Nehemiah Wilson to co-write the film.

Tessa, Nehemiah and I originally teamed up to address the design prompt Designing Safe Cities; the design prompt involved researching and analyzing currently available digital safety tools for urban areas, critiquing their approach to and construction of a definition of safety, and designing our own digital solution for urban safety that would be just and equitable. We performed an in-depth pro-con analysis on three available safety applications and the definitions of urban safety they propose, and found that overwhelmingly, these apps cater to a definition of safety that comprises of reacting to crimes (rather then taking preventative measures), constantly being surveiled, and avoiding areas of a city based on their reputation or recent law enforcement activity. We found these themes to be problematic, in that they avoid addressing root causes and community re-investment, while reinforcing negative stereotypes surrounding women's safety and inner-city communities.

When our research group moved on to our design phase, we struggled to ideate an digital solution for urban safety that did not extend or exacerbate the same violations of privacy, autonomy, and community. Realizing that the issue of urban safety is too broad for a single digital solution to fix, we decided to scope down to a single specific urban community - the Atlanta, GA campus of Georgia Tech - and shifted our focus towards interviews and contextual inquiries with community members. Instead of another app, our goals shifted towards hosting a real-world event that invested into addressing the community's issues directly. Utilizing the full range of our combined skillsets and network, we channeled our research results into an original screenplay, and created a short film to premiere on campus. The film addresses breaches of autonomy and privacy in a "safe" setting. We led a roundtable discussion with cast, crew, and subject-matter experts directly after the film's premiere.

My roles in this project included:

• UX Researcher (conducted semi-structured interviews, contextual inquiries, met directly with stakeholders/subject-matter experts, and performed background research),
• Film Producer (led communications among 10+ cast and crew, maintained detailed call sheets, managed logistics of 2 filming days),
• Designer (designed the posters and promotional imagery for the film),
• Social Media Manager/Marketer (created YouTube and Instagram accounts for film, created and managed social media rollout calendar - 9 posts for 100+ followers in ~7 days, trailer that garnered 1000+ views in 24 hours, sold-out premiere event with 200+ attendeees and an additional 300+ views in digital premiere the following day).

Original GameBoy Advance Game about fighting bodily infections.

The Last Neutrophil is a game designed and developed by me for the GameBoy Advance. The game is coded entirely in the C programming language and is my most significant foray into programming in C, as well as my most intricate full-scale foray into game development.

Players control Neutrophil Jones, a white blood cell said to be the last line of defense in a body fighting infections from parasites, bacteria, and viruses. The game is a 2D Platformer with shooter and beat-em-up elements, as players navigate Jones around the inside of a blood vessell to dodge attacks from the infections and dish out their own punches, kicks, and bullet attacks. There are three levels of Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulty, and in each level the player has 45 seconds to defeat the infections without succumbing to the infections first.

I ideated this game as a response to a severe bout of illnesses I and my family faced during a difficult period. Working on the game was a way to find catharsis through the stress while still staying productive and adding to my portfolio. In creating this game I was able to not just practice, but extend the ideas and knowledge I gained in a class for coding in C for the GameBoy Advance, while creating something much more complex and detailed than I got to make in class.

My roles in this project included:

• Game Developer (coded the entire game myself in the C programming language using VS Code and a GBA compiler),
• Game Designer (designed levels, difficulties, and mechanics; re-designed and/or created all assets in Photoshop; re-designed sounds in Audacity)

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2023 Sammy Otoo. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution of the ideas, concepts, writings, names and designs discussed and shown are prohibited.

Note: Click the button below, then click "Run It Anyway" on the next website to play the game.