Technical Writing Portfolio
Introduction
Welcome to my technical writing portfolio. The following projects are technical genre experiments selected from my UCSB class WRIT 107T (Fall 2020). Many of these projects challenged my creativity and problem solving, skills, and pushed me to learn new skills.
About the Author
California Kromelow attends the College of Creative Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, where she pursues a degree in Writing and Literature.
Video CAM TALK (introduction)
Technical Genre Experiment
Instructional video
Skills: Self-learning, script writing, baking, set designing, directing, video editing
Familiarity with genre: I had created a few videos through iMovie in the past. I hadn’t practiced my video editing skills in over a year
Greatest skill increase: Video editing (through studying youtube cuts and implementing them)
Regrets: time, size (shooting 3+hours of footage and editing it down to 20 minutes) , audio imperfections, unattractive thumbnail
Excerpt from author’s note:
My goal was to make a topical video (Halloween theme), which may interest an audience who watch baking videos, or Halloween-themed videos around Halloween-time.
I made a lot of authorial choices, and researching successful videos really helped me figure out my general path that I wanted to go down. That in turn guided almost every process of creating my video. Each step of this vide-creating process required design choices.
Planning the video: exact set/prop/camera angle choices/content.
Writing the script: word choice, timing/sentence length, material, etc.
Editing the video: where to cut, what types of cuts to make, what music, etc.
If I were to do this type of project again, I would love to have 3 DSLR cameras with tripods and proper lighting in order to improve video quality.
Technical Genre Experiment
Adventure text
Skills: Self-learning, programming, storyboarding, writing
AI BOX EXPERIMENT
Humanity has created a super-intelligent AI. It is up to you, dear player, to decide whether or not the AI should be released into the world.
Free Game Download:
Mac AI Box Experiment zip file
Familiarity with genre: I had created a few video games through ink and Twine in the past. I hadn’t practiced my coding skills in over a year. Entering this text, my coding skills were about the same as a new comer’s. Additionally, I was using Ren’Py (a software new to me) and Atom (a programming text-editing software new to me)
Greatest skill increase: Programming problem solving (having problems and seeking solutions)
Regrets: Pivoting. My goal was to create an interactive dialogue experience through an intricate branching conversation. Due to time constraints, I created specific dialogue paths for the audience to read as if they were experiencing a written story. Interaction remained a central core of the game through the game’s win/lose condition. The audience can choose to either keep the AI locked in the box or let the AI out of the box
Excerpt from author’s note:
Video CAM TALK (Spoiler warning)
Research Project
Educational Math Game
Magic Hour is an educational math video game for students in middle and high school. In this game, the player is a magician’s apprentice who must learn spells in time for the upcoming wizard tournament. Unfortunately, their teacher only knows time magic, which was banned from the tournament in ’96 to discourage cheating and negligent paradox-creation. Fortunately, the kingdom seems to be filling up with other apprentices who are more than happy to teach the unlucky player a spell or two. Math concepts such as posets, elements in group theory, and pushing and popping in formal systems, are explored in mini-games through spell-learning sessions
Technical Genre Experiment
Visual Novel Trailer
Skills: Self-learning, graphic design, writing
Educational Math Game
Skills: Self-learning, writing, programming, graphic design, pivoting
Free Game Download:
Familiarity with genre: When starting this project, I had some familiarity with coding thanks to my AI Box Experiment game, which I had completed several weeks before. Additionally, I was familiar with storyboarding, writing dialogue, and creating graphic art.
Greatest skill increase: Programming. I treated this project like a week long game jam where I spent at least 40 hours storyboarding, coding, writing, creating graphic art, finding music assets, and fixing bugs. I spent most of my time writing code or dialogue inside of Atom. Predictably, my confidence in my programming skill and my programming knowledge increased significantly.
Regrets: Although I am very happy with how the game turned out, I recognize that it could still be better. For example, I did not play test the game as thoroughly as I would have liked to, and there could be bugs. Additionally, my original plan for each of the three witches’ spell practice sessions included more complicated mini games than the ones that I implemented in the final game. During the programming process, I realized that my original mini game ideas would have taken 15+ hours to create and implement. Several times, such as in this case with the mini games, I chose to pivot away from my original plans in favor of new ideas that would take less time to implement. In this way, I actively sought out information that could help me make a more informed decision and practiced pivoting when it was reasonable to do so. Although the Poset practice game is absolutely amazing. The pushing and popping (formal system game) doesn’t incorporate the wager (betting) element used in the tournament spell. Worst of all, the Group Theory practice game and tournament spell have the least amount of math possible (only multiplication practice with no group theory actually implemented). My original project was ambitious and I did not realize just how ambitious my plan was (in terms of time, skills, and assets required) until I completed my research process and began creating the game.
Author’s Note
Companion Text
Skills: Researching, writing
Open Author’s Note in Google Docs
The Author’s Note contains a creative nonfiction essay “A Student’s Lament”, which mirrors texts like “A Mathematician’s Lament.” These texts explain the current state of how math is being taught ineffectively. My game Magic Hour serves as evidence that mathematics can be taught in a fun and engaging way. Additionally, my Author’s Note contains selections from papers by mathematicians, teachers, and game designers.
Regrets: This author’s note is not polished. I intended to turn it into a publishable paper formatted as a scientific research paper. However, it should be noted that I recognize this text’s shortcomings and proudly accept them. I chose to direct resources towards completing and debugging the educational math game, rather than revising and re-formatting my final project’s companion text. I made this decision early on and am thankful for it. This decision allowed my educational math game to reach its current level of quality. I am also extremely thankful for my teacher’s extension. Among many things, this research has taught me a great deal about production schedules, scope, and prioritizing tasks.
Additional notes on my game not covered by my Author’s Note:
Magic Hour teaches math concepts by first introducing the concepts, then allowing the audience to follow their curiosity and read additional texts, then allowing the audience to gain familiarity with the concepts through practice mini games, and finally rewards players for their practice and self-learning through a wizard tournament.
The audience is allowed to seek out additional texts in the library within the game world. Each of the three texts uses a different method to teach its material to the audience. The Group Theory text is direct, gives information, lets the audience decide if they are interested in the concepts, and is best representative of self-guided learning. The Formal Systems text is written as a fun short story to convey the general feel of material in the style of Hofstadter’s book “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” if it were written for a younger audience. The Poset text has a mixture of mathematical concepts and real world examples, similar to a good science textbook.
Writing these textbook sections was one of the most stressful parts of creating this project. I feared that if I created boring, unsuccessful math texts, then I would be contributing to the problem of bad teachers creating math averse kids. I became very stressed over the possibility of teaching math in a bad way and letting kids down. I spent a considerable amount of time planning out how I would introduce math concepts and create my math lessons rather than spending that time creating math lessons. This was but one of the many challenges I faced when creating this educational math game.
As previously mentioned, I scrapped core math-teaching mini games after realizing that they couldn’t be completed within the time frame. Then, I had to figure out how to replace them with something acceptable. I started out with the idea of three unrelated mini games. Each helped the audience familiarize themself with one of three math concepts that I wanted to teach the audience. Early on, I ran into the problem of needing to create a fourth game that combined all three mini games and reward the player for their time spent practicing math in the three mini games. This needed to happen because the player needed an in game incentive in order to ensure they would spend time practicing their math skills in each mini game. I came up with a tournament battle system as a solution. With the tournament solution decided, and time dwindling, and my previous mini game ideas thrown out, I had to come up with new mini games that bridged the gap between the math taught in the first half of the game and the tournament the players would play through in the climax of the game.
I am satisfied with Magic hour’s mixture of math and fun. I feel that this educational math game successfully familiarizes its audience with new math concepts without overwhelming them. Many math averse students dislike math because it feels like a foreign language. Magic Hour implements the creative solution of teaching new math definitions by stimulating student’s desire to learn new magic spells. Such spells are learned about through the audience’s peers (other apprentices), rather than a traditional teacher. In this way, the player’s wizard mentor is both a teacher and not. In Magic hour, math education is pursued by the player rather than being forced on them by an authority figure.
Annotated Bibliography
It should be noted that this educational math game was informed by research.
Additionally, my approach to this creating this game was heavily influenced by the following two sources that were not originally mentioned in my annotated bibliography. Although, I did not annotate them or consciously plan how I would use them to inform my math game, I believe that they may have had some subconscious effect.
Conclusion
I learned a lot through my technical writing class’s self-guided approach to learning. I believe that self-guided learning leads one to pursue new skills and practice them. I am proud of my projects and plan to continue using the skills to make even better projects in the near future.