A critical component to our success has been the fully integrated multidisciplinary team involved in this project. While many serious games consult Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), it is less common for them to be full team members. This project was supported by a Smart and Connected Communities grant from the NSF which stipulated true cross-disciplinary effort bridging HCI (and games) with Civil Engineering, Social Science, and Fire Science. One of the things that made this possible was that each discipline had its own deliverable, though we all worked together to give insight into the other deliverables. From the Social Science side there were network and communication maps showing connections between different organizations in our two target communities (Marin and Alameda). From Fire Science there were analysis and simulations based on historic fire data in the region. Civil Engineering contributed data-driven models of projected evacuation scenarios based on different traffic patterns and scenarios. And from the games side, we took insights from each of the others and translated those concepts into interactive experiences that could be approachable and accessible to a wide audience from the general public. 

This critical interdisciplinary led to discussions and ideas that would not have been possible without all of these perspectives being at the table. One interesting side effect was that when the whole team would go to the target communities to share our research and gain local insight, we would use game design activities, such as storyboarding, that resulted in truly rich and meaningful discussions with community members that brought down communication barriers and opened everyone up to a more collaborative mindset.