Prototype

While We Were Young - Expansion and Sorting

Type: Conversation Card Deck Context: User testing showed that the original 24-card deck ran out too quickly and that several questions depended too heavily on adult life experience, so I expanded and reorganised the deck to support a wider range of ages and conversational depths.

Objective

The first version of the deck worked well for generating family stories, but the limited number of cards became a problem because participants frequently exchanged questions they were not interested in answering. Younger players also felt excluded from prompts that assumed experiences such as marriage, employment or reflecting on a distant childhood. The objective of this iteration was to create more variety and make every question accessible across different ages.

Process Breakdown

Expanding the Deck

I added another 24 cards, bringing the final deck to 48 questions. This gave participants more freedom to skip unsuitable topics without quickly exhausting the available options.

Reviewing Age Accessibility

I identified questions that required too much adult hindsight or assumed that childhood was already far in the past. These were revised so that younger participants could answer through their current experiences, observations or imagined comparisons.

Sorting by Conversational Depth

The questions were organised into Easy, Medium and Reflection categories. Easy questions focus on concrete memories such as food, objects, games and routines. Medium questions introduce more personal comparison, while Reflection questions ask about values, relationships, change and the meaning of specific memories.

Maintaining Participant Choice

Players are allowed to exchange cards or pass without explaining why. This was important because even an apparently harmless childhood question may be uncomfortable within a particular family context.

Encouraging Reciprocal Storytelling

Once a player selects a question, everyone is invited to respond. This prevents the deck from becoming a one-sided interview and allows family members to compare experiences around the same topic.

Keeping the Session Manageable

The recommended session lasts around two rounds or approximately 30 minutes. During testing, the first round usually helped participants become familiar with the format, while the second round produced more relaxed and detailed storytelling.

Key Takeaways

  • Increasing the number of cards improved variety, but revising the assumptions inside the questions was more important for making the experience genuinely intergenerational.
  • The depth categories create a useful progression while the pass and exchange rules preserve participant autonomy.

Reflection

  • This iteration made me realise that a question is not inclusive simply because every participant can read it.
  • Younger family members still need a realistic and meaningful way to enter the topic.
  • The Easy, Medium and Reflection sorting helps with progression, but the emotional difficulty of each card will still differ between families.