Focus topics guide the entire design process. It is essential to constantly be aware and refine the focus of a project to make sure it stays on track and every group member is has the same goals. Throughout our process we used various techniques to gain focus including affinity diagramming, brainstorming sessions and descoping sessions.

Affinity Diagrams
Often times we found ourselves with more questions and data than it knows what to do with. At these times we found affinity diagramming, or card sorting, to be very helpful. This technique was essential in our initial phases in order to truly understand the domain and the various questions we wanted to answer. Later on in the project this technique was very useful in determining our various interface focus areas based on our user research take-aways. Below you will find the results of these various affinity diagramming sessions.

Brainstorming Sessions
When the group became really excited about new research or realizations we often found ourselves wanting to explore various possible ideas. Brainstorming allowed us to explore the numerous possibilities we had and talk as a group to build exciting new ideas and possibilities. It was these brainstorming sessions that often resulted in new data recording methods, design techniques and interface ideas.

Descope
Part of narrowing a focus is eliminating various design ideas or development plans based on various reasons. In the second half of the capstone project we found that descoping was very helpful to help make us pick what was really important. This technique was borrowed from Computer Science and altered to fit our needs of narrowing our concepts and development. In this method we performed a kind of cost-benefit analysis of various lines of inquiry. In a design descope we analyzed the user data we had collected and based on the needs of the game, chose which areas should be further explored, which should be eliminated and which should be combined. In a development descope we selected which parts of the interface were required to play the game and how much time those various areas or features would require to actually implement. This approach requires constantly asking the question, "Do we really need this?". Unlike other techniques it asks the group to act as advocates of various design ideas, instead of asking the group as a whole to select which to eliminate. This was useful because it was often difficult for members to know which areas could be droped, but easier for members to know what interface areas were needed.