This project was for a Thesis class I was taking in the Fall of 2022. The goal was to create a project regarding anything you felt passionate about and how it would exist in the state of a gallery exhibition. When assessing my own work, I find myself gravitating to themes regarding empathy, interaction and story-telling. From the get-go, I knew I wanted my exhibition to have an interactive element to it. In addition to my current practice in User Experience design, I wanted to use this opportunity to see where interaction lies outside of UI/UX, which led me to game design. For this project, I created a 38-card game where people can play the game on-site with the physical cards or the QR code prototype.

The Concept, The Inspiration, The Research

To address previous themes in my work, I wanted to continue to focus on leaving an emotional impact on whoever was interacting with my game. I came up with the concept of weConnect to juxtapose the concept of small talk with a game that promotes deep conversations. In the game, each of the cards is laid out by the color of the deck. The pair starts with the yellow deck, which contains small talk questions for partners to cycle through. Once they finish with that deck they advance to the next deck, each deck has questions that promote deeper and more thought-provoking conversations. You win if you walk out with a deeper connection with your partner.

Additionally, I included reaction cards for users to react to their partner’s answers throughout the game.

My main inspiration for this card game was We Are Not Really Strangers and Big Talk, two card games that promote deeper connections and conversations.