ProjectProposal-PerryLee
From CS 160 Fall 2008
Contents |
Target User Group
Your target user group should be sensible (people you have access to) and not trivial (CS undergrads is not a challenge). Describe the user group in enough detail that you can easily separate the group from other types of people. Then include details about their needs and wants.
- those who are financially ignorant and/or interested in personal finance (e.g., the stereotypical college student, the stereotypical young family)
Problem Description
The problem description should be short and specific about the high-level goals of the project. The problem should be described in terms of user activities and situations where the problem occurs, and what aspects of the situation might be improved with a technical solution. e.g. obesity is a problem for many people and certainly for children. Games that encourage exercise can help reduce it. Education is a theme that doesn't require justification but you may want to discuss problems with certain types of education in traditional settings. Avoid describing or suggesting a solution at this stage that will hamper your design thinking when you actually start solving the problem.
Regardless if you hate it or love it, most of us need money to survive. Money management is a life skill. Although it may be true that money can't buy happiness, it certainly makes it a lot harder to be happy when you find yourself deluged with financial troubles and uncertainties.
To address the fairly widespread problem of financial ignorance (e.g., how to manage money), more needs to be done to fill the gap in learning. Why not use games as a medium for teaching "Personal Finance 101"?
Problem Context and Forces
The analysis section should give more background for the problem. What aspects of the situation might influence the problem solution? Think about location, time, environmental factors etc. Then think about aspects of the user group, their education, available time, motivation, values etc., What related or complementary solutions exist already?
"It's hard not to be worried when confronted with numbers such as these" [1]:
- About 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year.
- Average households carry some $8,000 in credit card debt.
- Personal bankruptcies have doubled in the past decade.
Turn on the TV. Listen to the radio. What do you see and hear? Interest-only loans; buy now pay later; make it big, play the lottery -- why are these buzz words so enticing when they shouldn't be?
I believe the problem is largely the result of ignorance.
There is no "Personal Finance 101" taught in schools. Rather, popular culture extols the "spend, spend, spend" lifestyle.
Consumers on the verge of adulthood are unaware of the financial challenges that they are soon to face and lack the basics skills in the management of personal finance [2].
Although economics is taught to varying degrees, few pay attention -- people do not see how the principles apply to them.
To make matters worse, people often times put off learning how to manage their money until it's too late -- when they are already in debt; the economy is worsening; and they have few, if any, remaining options.
Solution Sketch
Give a very brief sketch (outline) of the kind of solution(s) you are considering. Since your problem has barely been specified and you haven’t done any user interviews, you probably don’t have enough information to make many design choices. So your solution sketch should be very general. This is an excellent place to make use of real sketches (drawings) as well as text.
By using games as a medium, I believe that we can counter this trend of financial ignorance by creating a virtual world in which people can learn and practice personal financial skills, without the real-life risk.
One possible take is as follows:
In this virtual world, players are placed in control of an avatar and responsible for its day-to-day decisions -- much like in The Sims*** [3] or in Second Life [4]. The added twist to this genre is that all financial decisions closely mirror what you might expect in the real world. For example, buying a house is not a simple click to buy process, but one in which you may need to apply for a mortgage and understand all the risks before continuing.
At any given time, players can ask the game for help or clarification. One emphasis of this game is to break down technical jargon and hard to understand concepts into easy to understand, unambiguous language. Equal emphasis is placed on teaching the how and why of decisions -- e.g., why is a fixed-rate mortgage preferable to an adjustable-rate mortgage?
There are two modes of game: Free Play and Scenario.
In Free Play mode, the player is given the opportunity to customize his avatar and adjust starting factors (e.g., age, debt, job, salary) before beginning the game. There are no terms for victory. The game ends when the player's avatar dies.
In Scenario mode, the starting conditions are locked and players are given conditions for victory (e.g., pay off all of your student loans). The game continues until those victory conditions have been met or the player's avatar dies.
At the end of either mode, the game breaks down the financial decisions that that player made; analyzes them; and provides feedback and suggestions for improvement.
*** When I say "much like in The Sims or in Second Life", I am making the comparison with respect to the gameplay rather than the graphics.
