From An Idea To A Reality – Lila’s Perspective

From an Idea to a reality: Lila’s perspective

Hi, my name is Lila. I’m 13 years old and co-creator of the IN2GREAT ME! sensory exploration board game.

When I was in 6th grade, working with my school occupational therapist, she told me to throw a ball at the different things that can help me with a specific situation.

Later that day, when I met with Angie, I told her about this and she thought it was a great idea. We started talking about how we could expand on this idea and create our own game to help other kids who experience similar feelings and emotions like me.

It took me two sessions with Angie for us to agree on the actual game because we had to consider all the work we would need to complete to make this idea a reality.

First, we started thinking about what the characters should look like. Then we started to bounce around ideas like should we use a ball? bean bag? or pegs? to determine which sensory system was correct.

Angie and I disagreed on this for a while but eventually we agreed that pegs would be the best choice for our this type of game.

Then came even more work. We had to create all the Scenario, Strategy, and DO IT! cards. It took us over a year and a half to brainstorm and create all of the cards. I had to HAND WRITE all of the cards.

This was annoying because 1) it took a long time 2) it hurt my hand 3) I would sometimes copy a word wrong 4) I would sometimes misspell a word.

When this happened I had to erase the incorrect word and start again. I wasn’t happy when this happened.

When all of the cards were complete, we made a sample game board out of cardboard. I drew the character and sensory systems around it. My Mom and Angie spent a LONG time trying to figure out which pegs would work best for our game.

After the concept of the game was created and we determined all of the cards, my mom and Angie took over with finding the right team of people to actually create the game.

This is how our journey began. Thanks for reading.