Week 9

Contact Session

Functions of prototypes

Explore:

• Role and artefact will play
• Its look and feel
• How it will be implemented
• Different levels of fidelity
• Different audiences

Aspects of experience to test:

Personal & circumstantial

Cant be other people but can bring subjective richness to the design

Restaurant dining experience

• What is the existing experience? From different stakeholder P.O.V
• It depends if it is a fine dining experience or just casual dining.

• What external/internal factors impact on the experience?
• Service
• Food
• Accessibility of the restaurant
• How long the customer has to wait for the order

• What aspects of the existing experience could be enhanced/augmented/supported with technology?
• Service
• Waiting time
• How would introducing technology in to this context change the experience
• Introducing technology into a fine dining experience will lose its value of being a fine dining experience.
• Introducing technology into a casual dining experience would be more efficient
• What experience scenarios might you test with the technology
• Ordering through a device from your table
• Having your food delivered by technology (robot)

Prac Session

For this week's prac session, I just continued with the controller prototype. The idea for the controller has been completely changed from the original idea. The controller will consist of 4 buttons (left, right, up and down) and a puppet glove for the user. In able to control the player, the user has to wear the glove and bite the specific buttons. The buttons will be lined with foil and the mouth of the puppet will also be lined with foil.

Week 8

In this week's lecture, Greg talked about the alternate modes of interaction which are:

• Non-keyboard/mouse
• Tangible interaction
• Embodied interaction
• Augmented reality

The lecture was focussed on giving good examples of products that used non-keyboard/ mouse  interaction. Here are some of the examples given:

• Marble Answering machine - https://vimeo.com/19930744
• This concept takes the very complicated answering machine into something physical
• Reactable
• An electronic musical instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface.
• Super angry bird (tangible controller)
• Big mac index
• Human diagram
• Daily stack

Prac:

We started using the Makey Makey at Prac B and I thought that it was fun. We learned the basic mechanics of the makey makey and tried it out in different ways. 

The following photos were trying out different positions of the left, right and space button for PacMan. This concluded that the first photo position is the easiest of these two.

We then tried another interesting way of playing Pacman:

Lastly, I tried setting up the piano game:

Testing Session 2

Was the testing session successful?

• The Statement of Delivery stated that the users will be playing the first prototype of the game and will be given an evaluation form after. There would be 5 questions on the form. Their facial expressions and gestures will also be noted while playing. I can say that the testing plan was successful as everything planned was accomplished. There were 9 users who played and answered the form and the summary would be given below:
• Questions outcome:
• Is the current speed of the monster okay?
• 8 out of 9 users said yes and one said that it can be faster
• How can this game be improved in order for it to be more unique?
• Make it two player
• Could make the ball chase the player at a slower speed
• Bonuses like power ups
• What colour scheme shall be used in the design?
• Pink, grey and white
• High contrast colours

• What other exciting features can be added in this game?
• Sound
• More enemies
• Could make it so when players guess a correct letter they get an immunity buff for a few seconds

• Shall the maze be more complicated?
• Tighter maze
• More complicated for higher stages
• Randomised mazes

Week 7

Lecture:

The lecture for this week talked about how to design questions for testing prototypes. Techniques depending on the type of response being gathered:

• Qualitative
• Deals with descriptions - can be observed but not measured.
• Understand underlying reasons.
• Unstructured or semi-structured techniques.
• Quantitative
• Deals with numbers - measure incidence.
• Structured techniques.

In general, questions should:

• Be clear & specific
• Pay attention to ordering
• Give clear instructions on how to answer

We were then asked to answer these questions regarding our video prototype testing:

• Revisit your user-testing questions from the video prototype. Or consider the ones for your next testing round.
• Which are quantitative & which are qualitative?
• Can you suggest a better name for this game?
• qualitative
• How can the controller be improved?
• qualitative
• Is the hangman feature on the side too much for the game?
• quantitative
• What features can be improved and how?
• qualitative
• Would you play this game?
• quantitative
• How interesting is this concept?
• quantitative

Update with PacMania

This week is when I started implementing my game as it is due on week 8. My aim for the first interactive prototype is to have a working maze, a moving player and having letters for the player to pick up. For prac A, I managed to get my maze working, having a monster floating around (not functional yet) and a player who can move (up, down, left and right). For Prac B, I managed to get the player to restart once the monster bumps into the player