CLOVER.
Connecting Career Interests and Sustainability
Clover is a physical card game based on the Knowdell Motivated Skills Card Sort, a corporate skill assessment task. In addition to gauging the user's occupational interests, motivations, and career values, Clover offers an online component that connects sustainability goals with their profile.
Though all of the designs were independently created, the product was commissioned by Action Impact, a nonprofit affiliated with the Singapore Center for Social Enterprise. In December, 2020, the Singaporean government awarded Action Impact with a $20,000 grant to introduce Clover into the curricula for local middle and high schools. The final proprietary card deck is owned by Action Impact.
Timeline
August 2020 — September 2020
1 month
My Contribution
Solo development
Tools
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe After Effects
Adobe XD
Contributors
Supervisor
Keshav Khosla
OVERVIEW.
KNOWDELL MOTIVATED SKILLS CARD SORT CASE STUDY
Game Design
In the current model, each deck in the Knowdell Motivated Skills Card Sort has a different set of directions, in which the player must sort every card. However, most cards are ignored in the final analysis. The redundant and often confusing rulebooks will be replaced with one cohesive set of directions that focus the player's attention only on the cards used in the final analysis.
The analysis of the player's occupational interests, motivator skills, and career values in the Knowdell model requires an additional set of instructions that provide subjective, uninsightful, and unrelated conclusions, often encouraging the player to simply memorize their answers for future use. In addition to incorporating a new deck for sustainability, Clover will provide specific insights rooted in behavior psychology through a web-based algorithm.
Visual Design
The current design of the Knowdell Motivated Skills Card Sort does not appeal to the low- to mid-career target audience. These younger audiences may be drawn to more playful visual designs as opposed to the corporate appearance of Knowdell’s cards. It is difficult to distinguish between cards of the three categories without reading the text. Moreover, the text is clustered and fails to utilize empty space on the back of the cards.
The packaging, however, smartly organizes the cards into decks of three different colors, each containing a set of directions. The employment of colors as a method of distinguishing categories will be maintained in the final design.
GAMEPLAY & VISUAL REDESIGN
Simplified Gameplay
Clover’s gameplay will involve both a card and an online component. The player will remove the cards from each deck that resonates with their goals. They will then enter the most frequently selected card values into the Clover website, which will output user insights for each category.
An important lesson I learned while on the Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach team was that single-player games can be viewed as both personal experiences and spectacles. This simplified gameplay facilitates a more introspective experience for the player by eliminating the opacity of the original rules; but, how does it affect onlookers? Given the tight correspondence between the player's internal motivations and external actions, onlookers may empathize with the player's decisions without intruding on the game itself. In classrooms or workplace settings, this condition will allow individuals to better understand their cohort's motivations.
Card Design
The packaging and card design aim to visually communicate the category of the card through modified versions of the Clover logo. Each leaf of the clover represents a category, or suit, which appears on each card and deck for clear organization.
The front of each card displays a phrase, and the player may choose to look at the back of the card for the definition. The card also contains a value, which will be utilized in the analysis of the player's decisions.
Data Analysis
The driving algorithm behind Clover connects the user-inputted digits from their decks to certain data clusters based on Howard Gardner's theory of the seven types of intelligence. For instance, if a user most frequently selected motivator skills with a value of three, the algorithm will output a description of interpersonal/intrapersonal intelligence.
Click to access conversion between user-facing categories to data clusters.
COMBINING PAPER AND ONLINE COMPONENTS
Packaging Design
The new color palette utilizes soften tones to appeal to the younger audience, and the logo is reminiscent of a clover to denote the four categories and convey the theme of sustainability.
Logo and color palette
Online Data Analysis
A simple user interface will allow the player to enter their card counts into four leaves of a clover, which outputs a personalized summary of their choices. Borrowing from the Myers-Briggs gamified model, the website will allow users to print their customized clover on merchandise to promote identification between users.
Reflections
Though I had spent a good portion of my first year of college playing with game-related technology, Clover was the first game I ever created. I am revisiting this page in September, 2021, in a quiet celebration of my anniversary of making games. I've become a different designer since then; I've shed the artistic roots I grew in high school and (hesitantly) embranced my identity as a neuroscientist. Nonetheless, the design considerations behind Clover still represent many of my instincts today—to visualize, to engage my audience, to extend the magic circle. I'm signing off for this year, but I invite you to revisit this page in 2022—I'd love to share more then.