The following is my honors thesis, which is a research paper that I had to write in order to graduate with Honors from the University of Arizona. I had published the first two parts of this paper on my previous blog, but I have never published the full work until now. While I did try to adapt the tone of the paper to be more fitting for online reading, the paper is mostly unmodified, aside from a few major additions made to part four.

I’m going to warn you now; this paper is LONG. One of the goals when I was writing this was to show enough detail so that students who wish to try running a project like this could learn from our process and our mistakes. This project was a ton of fun, and I hope you’ll have fun reading about it.

Table of Contents

1. Intro
   1. Abstract
   2. The Team
   3. Introduction
2. PART ONE: Recruiting and Managing People
   1. Starting the Project
   2. Designing the Team Experience
   3. The Recruitment Process
   4. Unfortunately, Our Team was Too Big
   5. Availability and Communication Problems
3. PART TWO: The Senses Project
   1. A Broken Pre-Production Phase
   2. The First Prototype
   3. The Second Prototype
   4. Turning the Project Around
4. PART THREE: Pre-Production Done Right
   1. Fixing our Creative Process
   2. Rapid Prototyping and the Creative Process
   3. The Fruits of Pre-Production
   4. Prototype 1: Fighting Blind
   5. Prototype 2: Detonator
   6. Prototype 3: Particle Racer
   7. Prototype 4: Runner
   8. Prototype 5: Magnet Man
   9. Prototype 5, v2: Magnet Ball
5. PART FOUR: Prototyping until the Bitter End
   1. Our Creative Process during Production
   2. Our Development Process during Production
   3. Thoughts on the Prototype-Centered Process
   4. Things I Would Do Differently
   5. In Conclusion

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