Blog 10 - Interview 2 Reflection

The USC Game Innovation Lab.

The audio of my interview is located here on my blog.

1. Please explain how you are spending your mentorship time (Is it at a workplace or somewhere else?  Are you shadowing?  Are you able to do tasks that are meaningfully related to the topic?  If so, what?  Are there other people who are experts in the location?  Etc...)

I am spending my mentorship time at the Game Innovation Lab located on the University of Southern California (USC). This lab functions as a workplace, primarily, with several research associates/game designers working in the lab, but a significant portion of these people are also educators in the Interactive Media Division of the USC Cinematic Arts School, where they educate game design students. 

My mentors are both educators and game designers. I spend my mentorship time with fellow senior Jessica Bui, and we spend our time in the Game Innovation Lab both shadowing and participating in educational activities that are typically  held for students in the game design program. We have the opportunity to sit in on meetings for several different design projects in the lab, as well as participate in these activities that hone our own design skills. For example, throughout our mentorship, we've re-designed a pre-existing board game, essentially creating a physical prototype of game mechanics (the game in question was Up the River). We've also created a Twine interactive story, or a story that is created on the computer that allows readers to choose which of our pre-set directions they want to take to further the story. 

Other experts in the location would include other staff and faculty in the Game Innovation Lab; these people are experts in specific areas of game design, such as animation, programming, creative design, and more. Everyone in the lab specialize in different areas of study, and are all experienced individuals. 

2.  How did you find your mentor?  How did you convince this person to help you?  

While I was searching over the summer for potential mentors at small game companies and small design teams, my friend Jessica Bui stumbled across the USC Game Innovation Lab, and read into the program and its significance among game design programs across the nation.

I had come across a potential (yet unresponsive) mentor at the same time that Jessica contacted Tracy Fullerton, the director of the Game Innovation Lab at USC. She emailed Tracy all of the information regarding the senior project, how our school functions, and her personal skill level with programming and other aspects of game design. 

While I was still contacting my potential mentor (who, by the way, didn't appear very excited at the prospect of taking on an inexperienced mentor), I was in contact with Jessica, and we were both exchanging information on how our mentor searches were going. When Jessica got the confirmation that a mentorship at USC was  fine with our potential mentors, she asked if I would be willing to also mentor with her at USC. Of course, I jumped on the opportunity with her, and we've both been going to USC every other week ever since. 

3. How would you rate your comfort level with your mentor at this point in your relationship?  How does this relate to the time you've spent so far at mentorship/with this person?

 Personally, I'm quite comfortable with our mentors, Sean and Elizabeth. It is fairly easy to hold conversation with them, and they've done nothing but make Jessica and I feel welcome. Of course, as students under them who often interact with and shadow them, we dance the line between formality and casualness. While we are very polite to our mentors, we're on a first-name basis and often hold miscellaneous conversation with them. 

The director of the lab, Tracy, who is also one of our mentors, has not been around Jessica and I as often as Sean and Elizabeth, due to her busy schedule. While she is very friendly and welcoming, we have not talked in a casual setting with her as often as we have had with Sean and Elizabeth, so I typically find myself quite formal and polite with Tracy. Nonetheless, she is still a very kind person, and we still learn a lot from her. 

I've found that because I feel welcomed in the Game Innovation Lab by the staff and faculty, I'm quite comfortable in that setting. I'm not nervous or uncomfortable working and shadowing our mentors in that setting, so I feel that that comfort allows Jessica and I to focus more on our learning experiences while we're at the Lab.

4. What went well in this interview?  Why do you think so?  What do you still need to improve?  How do you know?  How will you go about it?

Sean has long-winded answers, and that was amazingly helpful-- to the point where each time I had a follow-up question for him, he managed to answer it before we could even move on to another question. It was both humorous and amazing; essentially, all of my questions for Sean were answered easily because of this ability of his.

As for improvement, I feel that I struggled in the preparation process of the interview, where I would create questions that revolved around Sean's background. I had difficulty distinguishing between questions that asking about Sean's background, and questions that fulfilled my own curiosities. I tried to overlap these two areas as best as I could, but I still felt that some of my questions fell short; thankfully, Sean's long answers provided with me with a good chunk of information, so that definitely helped make up for my mistake.

For future interviews, I will spend more time in the pre-interview process, taking more time creating my questions and reviewing them to ensure that they do what they're intended to do, as well as fill my own curiosities.