Reimagining city navigation in Copenhagen
Timeline
Team
1 Product Lead
1 Operations Head
1 Marketing Analyst
1 Creative Lead
Skills
User Research
Product Design
Pitching and Storytelling
Bring a startup from zero to MVP
During my fall semester studying abroad in Copenhagen through DIS Abroad, I took Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Europe, a course that challenged us to build a startup from scratch in 10 weeks. We had to identify real problems, iterate through multiple pitches, develop a niche product definition, and create a working MVP with a viable business model.
What's causing you the most issues abroad?
During my fall semester studying abroad in Copenhagen through DIS Abroad, I took Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Europe, a course that challenged us to build a startup from scratch in 10 weeks. We had to identify real problems, iterate through multiple pitches, develop a niche product definition, and create a working MVP with a viable business model.
Point Taken: A game that turns debate into collaboration
Resolving threads
Each argument thread can be resolved in two ways: one player is genuinely convinced, or both players pinpoint exactly where their reasoning diverges. Rule reminder cards keep the conversation honest along the way.
Outcomes
Point Taken is now live and making its way into schools, university classrooms, and company workshops.
Polarization and disagreement is everywhere.
While cross-partisan dialogue is often proposed as a fix for political division, research shows that without structure, these conversations can actually make things worse. People tend to treat arguments like a sport: one winner, one loser. Point Taken switches players from this "sports mode" to "collaboration mode."
Moving from research study to product
The game was originally developed within a pilot study at Northwestern, testing whether structured argument-mapping could reduce political hostility more effectively than unstructured conversation. I joined the team as the game transitioned from research tool to product — working simultaneously as a product design intern and as a research assistant in the psychology lab running the study. This dual role gave me a direct feedback loop: what I observed in controlled sessions shaped product decisions, and what I learned from open play testing pushed the research forward.
We ran early user testing sessions in psychology courses using a bare-bones prototype and a placeholder name. Students shared how they experienced gameplay, what they'd call it, and where they saw potential. After multiple rounds of feedback and team brainstorms, one name stuck: Point Taken.
Finding an identity that fits
Before landing on Point Taken, the game cycled through several names, each shifting how the team thought about the product's framing. I presented multiple directions myself, exploring how different names implied different framings: academic vs. playful, serious vs. accessible.
Early names leaned clinical, reflecting the game's research origins. But user testing revealed that players responded to language that felt inviting, not institutional. Point Taken struck the right balance: it nods to argumentation while implying mutual respect. It sounds like something you'd actually say mid-conversation.
The visual system evolved in parallel. Early materials were dense, text-heavy instruction PDFs—functional for a research study, but not for a product people would want to pick up and play.I explored directions inspired by contemporary tabletop games: clean layouts, flat illustration, and color as a functional tool (not just decoration). The final style needed to do three things at once:
Feel approachable
This is a game, not a lecture
Signal substance
The topics are serious, even if the format isn't
Scale across contexts
From printed tiles to digital marketing to the website
In collaboration with the senior designer, we created style guidelines and standards covering typography, color usage, illustration principles, and tone of voice. These became the foundation for everything that followed—including the commercial site I designed next.
Site Design
With Point Taken's brand and style guidelines finalized, I designed the commercial website in Framer and wrote all of the copy, iterating with the founder to stay aligned with the project's mission.
I started by moodboarding for web-specific inspiration — finding references that captured the energy of our brand guidelines but could be elevated through motion and interaction. From there, I wireframed and prototyped landing page layouts.
A key decision was how the brand site and the game site would relate. I mapped the information architecture and defined the happy path: how a visitor goes from learning about Point Taken to actually playing it.
This also forced me to think holistically about how the product communicates, converts, and connects with users at every touchpoint.
What I took away
Trust the process when the destination keeps moving
Game mechanics were revised nearly every week. Our founder brought fresh feedback from outside perspectives that sometimes pushed in different directions. Settling on a happy medium between competing opinions, while keeping the core experience intact, taught me to trust the process even when the destination wasn't clear.
Collaboration is the product
Designing game mechanics directly shaped the engineering architecture and surfaced technical constraints that fed back into design decisions. This taught me how when working in a small team, nothing exists in isolation. Every choice ripples across, and the best work came from staying aware of exactly that.
Curious to see more?
This case study covers the highlights. I'm happy to walk through my process deeper over a call. Feel free to reach out to me at maijaboelkins2027@u.northwestern.edu! ⊹₊ ⋆