Jainan Sankalia

I combined my academic knowledge as a Game Designer with my first-hand experience as a User Experience Professional by teaching students how applying the UX process to a game's Head's Up Display improves the communication taking place between a system and a user. 

But what should I do? With the guidance of Cassini Nazir, I shaped the class to address the six types of significant learning. 

But how would I do that? The class focuses on the Benchmark Portfolio Deck. A semester long project where students:

• Conduct UX Research to learn about a game's User Pain Points by analyzing the players, breaking down the current UI, and learning the requirements of the designer & system

• Breakdown & learn the strengths & weaknesses of other UI through a Competitive Analysis looking at inter-industry, intra-industry, and cross-industry analysis.

• Prove that their Design Solution is the best, by learning about themselves, learning through iteration & exploration, and justifying their solutions using their research & using their awareness of the basic principles of design.

But why does this matter? I was tired of hearing students say that a game was "pretty" or "fun". I wanted students to think like designers, but most importantly to justify their designs using research. I wanted to give them the tools and techniques to objectively communicate their ideas effectively.

My personal goals were to better refine my own process as a UX Profession, but also improve my skills as an Educator by removing the subjectivity from grading. I developed an objective Grading Rubric so I could provide better guidance and feedback.