Final Year Project (UI Design and Thoughts)

A final year project that was required by my school. It involved us creating a card game about Singapore's Total Defence. I believe that my team has done enough and so have I, and that we have all learned immensely from this experience, in which we had to tune our work towards a specific demographic and goal.

I created every single card art, going along with the themes of Total Defense while also putting my on takes on how each threat to Singapore would be perceived in a sort of "monsterfied" situation. I also designed out the defense cards, in which I took references from real life Singapore facilities and principles, and then turning them into some sort of power-up. I also managed to veer away from potential stereotypes and offensiveness by playing my designs safe. I have also designed the UI required for the application. This ranged from the main menu to the buttons, and the victory screens.
I have also helped in the game mechanic creation process, in the form of creating the "Escalation Trigger" mechanic as seen on the other cards I have created. While the effects of these escalations were not mine, it was I who came up with the original idea.
The game's messaging was also boosted with my own works, as I had come up with the reasonings on why the game's dynamic helped to bolster the education component of the game. This involved me having to write out the flavor text of the cards and also helping out with an Index idea for the game.

I've learnt that adapting to a client's needs can be plenty difficult, but engaging if you try to think within the parameters, and outside your own box at the same time. This was because I had to try and design things with a card template in mind. There was also the fact that I had to make the template not as noisy as I normally would like. This resulted in one of my earlier prototypes being almost completely scrapped. In the end, simple really was the best way to go.
To overcome this, I would consult the more well-versed in card design teammates of mine on how their card games looked and for any other possible references. I also kept looking around the internet for any more possible sources, and for any pre-existing cards I had at home. Somehow, I managed to find an art book about a card game from this. Having a set theme also helped me to design my UI a lot faster, as I had already decided on a set of references and also designed modular assets.
There was also the problem of having to adhere to the client’s demands of a strong messaging factor within our game, in which it took a combined group effort to brainstorm out different ideas to try and rationalize why our game would work as an education method. In the end we decided that the best way to address this was to implement in our own narratives that fit with the theme and implemented in characters that worked with said narrative.

I've also learnt that communication is a very, very precious thing, and that a team should always actively engage in constant communication to ensure proper workflow. Many times during our team's work flow, we had to frequently check on each other just to see how much progress each of us had completed. This lead to a lot of time mismanagement and quite a bit of confusion internally, and having to wrangle people to do their work is not too pleasant of an experience when you only find out in the last minute a huge chunk of work is missing.
To overcome this, I had to up my monitoring of the group and actively engage the group in more communication then before, having them update the group constantly on what they’ve done, or else they’d be called out.

Finally, I've also learnt to always seek others for feedback, for it is an equally precious resource. I had to actively seek feedback from within my team to quell any insecurities I had about my work. Even then, I couldn't help but feel everything was lacking in the beginning and even now, I still do. That is part and parcel with the creation of anything.
To this effect, I would seek feedback from outside sources such as other friends and other groups. Feedback is terribly important for any form of improvement. I would also revise my card designs many times via traditional drawing, consulting my team multiple times on how they’d look. I would also post the finished pre-inserted images of my card art to my team for any potential judgement before actually implementing it within the card templates that I’ve made.