Our User: The Flatiron Bro
Late 20’s-early 30’s / White collar / Money and time to spend socializing
The Flatiron Bro is a patron of Barcade that uses the space as a place for socializing. He tends to utilize the bar area and tables more than the arcade games. When playing games, they tend to chose the ones with shorter duration and the ability for multiple players. They frequent the bar after work hours and use the space as a meeting ground.
Creation Myth:
Three financial bros walk into Barcade. They are confused by the sight of an 8-year-old boy playing Pac Man at a bar. They walk over to the bartender and look over the drinks menu and decide on a few craft beers. As the bartender pours their drinks, they look around and notice more kids playing the arcade games. Because they are mainly here for the bar, they turn back around and await their drinks, asking each other what all these children are doing at the bar. Their beers arrive and they take their first sip. Slowly, they each feel some tingling in their feet. One finance bro looks to his collegue and sees him slowly transforming into his 8-year-old self. Before he has a chance to react, he himself also changes into his own 8-year-old self. They all race to play X-Men and battle each other with their root beers in tow!
Intervention:
Our intervention is the menu, from our research, we found that, the only time users read the information about the selection of craft beers is when they check the menu. So we designed a pairing menu, with description and image of certain beers matched to arcade games. We imagine when user order a beer they can read the information about the game, which may attract them to play that game.
Testing the Second Prototype:
For our second prototype installed in the IXD studio we decided to bring Barcade to our Thursday night get-together. We wanted to test the assumption that people play games that they have some connection with because of pervious experiences and memories. We chose games our generations might have played growing up: Mario Kart, Tetris, and Lunar Lander…
We found that people gravitated to the games that they knew and then stayed to play the others. Participants gathered around the games which attracted more users and a community formed around playing and talking about the games. Memories were recounted and tips were shared. While Tetris had the longest game play we found that it encouraged users to compete for a high score and therefore siloed its user. The other two games were a bit more social.
Two New Interventions:
Highlighting a game everyday at the bar, such as telling them the background story of the game, characters, etc, or instructing people on how to play the game. Displaying the highest score and the individual, in order to attract people to a certain game, especially those games that are unfamiliar.
Way-finding system for the arcade games: There is no list of all the games at the physical location. We want to provide a map with a short description of all the games and point out which games are multi or single players. Our assumption is that people will use it during their waiting times at the bar, which will educate them more about the various games.