L2 Inquiry - Proposal

Context - the circumstances that form the setting for the idea.

The context is the background information. It's the situation that forms the setting for your idea. You should be able to copy and paste the context from your inquiry and depending on where your inquiry lead, you may need to adjust. Remember this can be a story, a sentence, a paragraph, a statement.

What problem/issue have you identified through your research. Use the below bullet points to help you write it:

• Describe the problem/issue, giving the basic facts about it.

• Explain what has gone wrong.

• Specify the causes or the origin of the problem

• Describe the significance of the problem/issue (short term & long term)

• Give the appropriate data and state the sources.

• Specify who is involved and in what capacity.

• Discuss who initiated action on the problem, or what caused you to look at this.

Scope - involves determining and documenting a list of specific project goals, deliverables, tasks, costs and deadlines.

The scope is the work performed to be able to deliver the outcome with its specified features and functions. The scope involves determining and documenting a list of specific project goals, deliverables, tasks, costs and deadlines. 

It should keep you (and the team) on task. A scope statement is the document listing these boundaries, and articulates project details, provides a project roadmap, helps focus you (and your team members), and prevents projects from expanding. 

The better a project has been “scoped” at the beginning, the better you can manage change as well as complete the project effectively. 

Purpose - the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. 

What is the reason you are proposing to create this digital outcome? There needs to be a reason why your end users/target audience needs your outcome. 

Requirements - a thing that is needed or wanted and can be described by either its physical or functional nature.

What must the outcome contain to be considered successful. What are the goals in broad terms. There should be at least 5 key requirement. 

For example for a horror game use bullets points like:

• Must be a scary First Person Shooter game

• Must be easy to control

• Must have simple game mechanics

• Must have AI enemies who attack the player

Specifications - these are technical aspects that must be included in the outcome and be measurable.

This is a list of technical and measurable things that the game “will have” or “will be” in order to achieve the requirements. Note that there should be several specifications for every requirement. 

Eg. for a game with a requirement of being scary, specs might include:

• The game will have dark lighting

• The game will have creepy ambient sounds including distant screaming

• The game will be single player only

• The game will be set in a mental asylum

• The game will have zombies

There should be at least one of two specifications explaining how each requirement will be met so there will be more specifications that are requirements. Some specifications may be valid for multiple requirements. In this example "The game will have zombies" may be valid for "Must be a scary First Person Shooter game" and "Must have AI enemies who attack the player"

End Users - the person or people that an outcome is designed for.

Who is going to use or benefit from the digital outcome? Who are you aiming at developing your product for? Try to aim it at someone in a group you have access to and be specific, don't say “everyone”. When you are developing a target group for your product it can be very useful to pick a group that you have ready access to that you can engage with during the development process.

Resources - are materials, energy, services, people, knowledge, skills, time equipment, hardware, software and expertise

What do you have access to in order make your product:

• Who is part of your team?

• What skills do they have?

• How much time do you have to make it?

• What software are you going to use?

• What hardware do you have access to? 

These resources could be things that you have access to at home, school, local libraries, club facilities, or anywhere else.

This helps you to judge if a game is in scope, is it do-able with the given resources.

You may need to justify why your product is a good idea. Some possible ideas you can use to justify why it is could be:

• What feedback did you get

• Expert Opinion

• Market Analysis

• Academic Research

• Similar Products

• How it relates to the requirements

For example:

"I am going to make a science fiction top down shooter game because ..."

• The people that I asked for feedback thought the idea of playing a giaint space squid was a cool and original idea.

• Extra Credits said that top down shooters are one of the easiest genres to make.

• Games like Nuclear Throne and Helldivers are very popular games with millions of copies sold