Collaborative Design Pratice: Task 2 - Proposal

17.10.2025 - 28.11.2025 （Week 4 - Week 10)
Lew Guo Ying / 0365721 / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media

Collaborative Design Pratice

Task 2: Proposal

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Index

1. Instructions

    1.1 Game Board

    1.2 Manual Guide

    1.3 Submission

2. Feedback

3. Reflections

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Instructions

MIB for Collaborative Design Pratice

Requirement:

For this task, we need to create sketches and a redesign proposal to show our idea direction. This includes:

• Reviewing the original design and identifying its issues.

• Summarising research findings and key user pain points.

• Creating initial sketches that explore how we plan to improve the design.

• Explaining how our redesign addresses the pain points and leads to a clearer, more user-centred solution.

These sketches and proposals act as the foundation for the later prototyping and testing stages in the module.

Game Board

Fig2.1 Game board References

For this stage, our team divided into two groups:

one focusing on the game board, and the other on the visual design of the cards and tokens.

To ensure that our redesign fits different player needs and supports multiplayer interaction, we collected a wide range of references.

Our references include:

• Card illustration styles (cute, educational, biology-inspired visuals)

• Board shapes and layouts such as hex tiles, circular paths, modular boards, and resource-based layouts

• Biology-themed visual references for organs, mitochondria, and metabolic systems

• Existing tabletop games to study usability, clarity, and how information is structured during gameplay

These references help us understand how different board shapes influence player flow, strategy, and accessibility, while also guiding our visual direction for a cohesive and engaging redesign.

Fig2.2 References organ

Since we cannot change the core mechanics of the original game, finding a visual replacement within the same thematic domain became essential. We decided to use human organs and body systems as our main visual metaphor, because glucose plays a vital role in the human body—both as stored energy and as the basic fuel for everyday activities.

Fig2.3 Sketch version 1 gameboard

After group discussion, we identified the five main zones in the game and matched them with biological counterparts:

• Jail → Fat tissue (where excess glucose is stored)

• Bank → Insulin (the “key” that unlocks cells and manages glucose flow)

As for Investment, Base Camp, and Stock Market, we plan to shift these elements into each player’s personal board. This allows players to manage their own resources while keeping the central board focused on the shared biological system.

The final setup consists of:

• One shared board representing the body

• Individual personal boards for each player to manage investments and actions

This structure maintains the original gameplay flow while creating a more coherent and meaningful visual narrative.

Fig2.3 Low fi version 1 board

We then created a low-fi version of the game board to visualise how our biological theme could be applied. Since the game involves insulin, fat storage, and ATP cash, we decided to shape the main board as a blood vessel, which naturally represents the environment where glucose travels, accumulates, and gets processed.

Inside the blood vessel:

• Insulin (Bank) is positioned as a soft, organic shape.

• Fat tissue (Jail) sits as a storage-like structure.

• ATP card area represents usable energy.

• The logo sits in the centre as the “core system.”

Around the border, we added cell-like structures to strengthen the biological metaphor.

For the personal board, we plan to use mitochondria as the main container, since it is the organelle that produces ATP and aligns perfectly with the player’s resource-management actions. Each player will therefore handle Investment, Base Camp, and Stock Market inside their own mitochondria board while interacting with the public blood-vessel board.

This low-fi helps us communicate placement, hierarchy, and thematic coherence before polishing the visual style.

Fig2.4 Version 2 Gameboard

Since glucose can also be produced in plants, we explored a plant-inspired circular layout that resembles roots and stem networks. This provides a softer, nature-driven metaphor but still maintains the energy-production theme.

Fig2.5 Version 3 Gameboard

A more structured approach where we grouped:

• Investment + Stock → Bank

• The remaining areas (Jail, Base Camp, cards) arranged cleanly in separate sections.
  Icons were added to make each zone visually clearer. This version aims for simplicity and readability.

Fig2.6 Version 4 & 5 Gameboard

Glucose molecules form hexagonal rings, which inspired a hex-tile system.

We explored two directions:

1. Portable modular tiles that players can expand like LEGO or an “infinite board”

2. A 6-player segmented board where each player owns a hex region, surrounding a central logo and shared resources

This version gives the game flexibility and strong thematic connection to glucose chemistry.

Fig2.7 Final Game board Decision

After comparing all versions, we decided to move forward with Version 1.

The original game board was visually crowded, making it hard for players to track glucose, actions, and zones clearly. Our goal was to create a board that is cleaner, more structured, and easier to navigate.

The circular main shared board paired with individual personal boards gives players a clearer overview of the core metabolic system while separating personal actions from the main flow. This layout effectively solves the original pain point by improving clarity, reducing overlap, and providing better visual hierarchy.

Manual Guide

Fig2.8 Original Manual Guide

The original manual is handwritten, cramped, and visually inconsistent, making the rules hard to read and follow.

We will fully digitalise the manual, organise the layout with clear sections, add icons and consistent typography, and apply our visual system to create a cleaner and easier-to-understand rulebook.

Fig2.9 Sketch of Manual Guide

We decided to redesign the manual guide into a four-panel foldable layout, which becomes a compact square when folded. This matches the size of our game board (after two folds) and ensures the guide fits neatly inside the box.

To avoid the clutter and length of the original manual, we streamlined the content so players can understand the game quickly. The new layout includes:

1. Front Panel — Logo, title, and game components

2. Panel 2 — Game Setup, How to Play, and Rules

3. Panel 3 — Game Area overview with explanations of each zone on the board

4. Panel 4 — Power Cards showcase and descriptions

This structure keeps the information organised, readable, and easy to reference during gameplay.

Submission

Presentation Slide

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Feedback

Week 6 : 

Mr Shamsul commented on the card layout designs and pointed out that the top down layout with the main image in the centre with border is the best. 

Week 7 : 

Mr Shamsul approved the good idea of splitting the board into personal and main but we need to think clearly what elements can relate to our target audience. 

Week 8 : 

Mr Shamsul liked the overall direction and feel of the stock market and power card but suggested making the "skip" card more obvious. 

Week 9 : 

The logo should be refined to make the lines thicker and reduce the amount of pointers , the green color is a good choice. 

Week 10 : 

The initial first version digitalization of the cards needed more elements in the background, can brainstorm ways to fill the empty white space and reconsider the font used.

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Reflections

Observation

At the beginning, designing the game board was quite challenging. The original game already had many coloured zones, and we were not allowed to change too much of the mechanics or structure. This meant we had to merge and reorganise what was already there instead of starting from zero.

At the same time, our visual direction for the project was pastel colour–based, which is usually soft and gentle. However, on a board game full of information, this type of colour scheme felt less attractive and not very readable.

Findings

Through sketching and discussion, we realised that:

• If everything uses similar pastel tones, the board looks flat and players cannot easily separate different areas at a glance.

• The board actually needs stronger contrast and slightly deeper colours to maintain clarity.

• Splitting the layout into a main board + personal boards is an effective way to reduce clutter and confusion, even if the colour palette is still being adjusted.

• When using the human body metaphor (blood vessels, fat, insulin), pastel colours can create a visual mismatch with people’s mental image of organs, which are usually seen as more solid, saturated colours. This makes the theme feel slightly “off”.

These findings tell us that structure-wise, our solution is working, but the colour system needs further refinement to balance pastel branding with biological readability.

Experince

Overall, this phase felt like a constant negotiation between game mechanics, biology accuracy, and visual style. Even though there were many constraints, deciding on the main board + personal board structure already solved a big part of the original clutter problem.

For the next steps, we will continue to experiment with deeper tones, accent colours, and how to stylise organs so that they still feel biological but can live inside a pastel-based system. It’s very much a “one step at a time” process, but this iteration taught me how important it is to respect both player readability and thematic logic at the same time.