Interactive Prototype 3 - Feedback and Reflection

Feedback

For this final interactive prototype, I added a new feature which is for players to choose the difficulty level. During the testing session, most people liked this new feature and they thought it was necessary to add this feature into my game because it made the game more interesting and challenging. I got all the positive feedback for the game including the functionality and the operability. However, the feedback for the physical interaction was not all positive. There are not much improvements for the interaction since the last prototype. Some tester said my interaction was not interesting enough because it still looked like four arrow keys on the keyboard. Beyond that, my prototype was really interesting to play.

Reflection

How well did the prototypes developed allow you to test your intended ideas & interactions? 

Based on the feedback from the last prototype, I have added a new feature which is for players to choose the difficulty level. This has successfully made the game become more interesting and challenging through testing. I have also fixed my control panel by covering the foil paper so that to make it easier to control the frogs.

What were the constraints that the technology, style of prototype or approach place on the ability to test those ideas? 

The problem from the last prototype which is the flashing screen once two frogs touch each other still not solved this time. Maybe I need to change the rule and then the problem will be solved. Otherwise, once the frog touches another, the ball will be switched that's why the screen will flash at that time.

How might you change your approach/technology/style to better test those ideas? 

The only thing I need to change for this prototype is to change a better way for users to interact with. The current interaction is very boring for the users to player compared with other people's interaction. If I have a chance to improve my interaction, I would make a interactive hula hoop and the user stands inside the hoop and use his waist to control the direction of the frog by touching the hoop. I think this idea would make the game more interesting.

Interactive Prototype 3 Development

By discussing with the tutor on the prac session, I decided to implement addition of new features for my interactive prototype 3. For the last two prototypes, I had almost positive feedback from the testing session. However, the players feel the game is easy to play so I decided to implement an additional difficulty level for the players. I keep the existing level as a easy level and add a hard level for the users. I have added a starting page which is for users to choose the level first and then starting the game. Here is the screenshot of that page.

The difference between hard level and easy level is the different speed of the yellow moving blocks. The speed in the hard level is much faster than the speed in the easy level. Once one of the players wins the game and restart the game, it will go back to this page again. Here are the screenshots of some codes that I have added.

Next, I am going to make the control panels look better and easy to control.

Week 12 - Class Exercise

How has your understanding of prototyping changed since week 1?

My understanding of prototype does not change too much since week 1. 

What would you change about your initial description?

My understanding of prototyping was that an early sample or model that gives people a concept and a learning experience of the final product. It could be in the form of a physical design or an electrical design. The purpose is to test and analyse the concept of your product. During this semester I have learnt that there are many types of prototype and what I have done is making a physical interaction so I think a prototype is more like a sample or model that can be interacted with physically and it is very important to test each prototype by different people.

How is that related to your experiences?

I have made a flash game which is connected with MakeyMakey so that people could have physical interaction with my game and have more fun from my game. I made a physical control penal by paper cut and model compounds which is just like a physical gamepad. So people will feel like using gamepad playing my game. I have also learnt how to test a prototype. During the testing session, I asked some questions includes qualitative questions and quantitative questions so that I could improve my prototype according to testers' feedback.

Week 6 - Class Exercise

What are the objects in YOUR concept?

Stage, Play Area, Player 1 Frog, Player 2 Frog, Ball, Moving Blocks

What do they need to know?

Ball needs to know when it's touch a frog, when it's touch another frog, when it's touch the blocks.
Player Frog needs to know when it's move up, left, right and down when the arrow key is pressed and need to know when it's touch the blocks, the ball and another player frog.

Create CRC cards for the scenario/s you intend to test in your prototype.

Week 11 - Class Exercise

Imagine a Theremin Duet or orchestra.

Generate concepts for consistently reproducing & representing 3D movement in space that allows a musical composition to be accurately played on a Theremin.

Producing a virtual Theremin by controlling with a mouse. Using MouseY to control the amplitude and using MouseX to control the frequency.

Pugh Matrix to compare concepts 
What criteria important to measure against?

Evaluate each choice against the criteria. There are three ways to do this:

Method 1: Establish a rating scale for each criterion. Some options are:

1, 2, 3 (1 = slight extent, 2 = some extent, 3 = great extent)

1, 2, 3 (1 = low, 2 = medium, 3 = high)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (1 = little to 5 = great)

1, 4, 9 (1 = low, 4 = moderate, 9 = high)

Make sure that your rating scales are consistent. Word your criteria and set the scales so that the high end of the scale (5 or 3) is always the rating that would tend to make you select that option: most impact on customers, greatest importance, least difficulty, greatest likelihood of success.

Method 2: For each criterion, rank-order all options according to how well each meets the criterion. Number them with 1 being the option that is least desirable according to that criterion.

Method 3, Pugh matrix: Establish a baseline, which may be one of the alternatives or the current product or service. For each criterion, rate each other alternative in comparison to the baseline, using scores of worse (–1), same (0), or better (+1). Finer rating scales can be used, such as 2, 1, 0, –1, –2 for a five-point scale or 3, 2, 1, 0, –1, –2, –3 for a seven-point scale. Again, be sure that positive numbers reflect desirable ratings.

Interactive Prototype 2 - Feedback and Reflection

Feedback

During the practical session, some of my classmates tested my interactive game and I got some feedback from them. The feedback that I have got are almost positive and the testers all gave me 9 out of 10 for my game and my interactive design. However, some students also gave me some suggestions that I could implement and improve for the next prototype. The first suggestion is that I could make the interaction more physical so that to make the control panel more functional instead of just using modeling compound as the arrow keys. The modeling compound is a little bit hard to control and the connections of the makey makey is very easy to move from the compound. The other suggestion is that I could add a function of jumping that making a jumping pad so players could get more fun through controlling the frog. Also, once the two frogs touches together, they will shake in the screen which may be a problem. The photo below is two players are playing Hungry Frogs.

Reflection

How well did the prototypes developed allow you to test your intended ideas & interactions? 

My idea is to develop a game for two players so I have made two physical control panels for each player to control their frogs. The interactive prototype I have designed includes two control panels which are made of paper cuts and modeling compounds. By touching fours blue compounds, the player could control the direction of its frog. Therefore, the prototype has successfully achieved the purpose and idea of this game. 

What were the constraints that the technology, style of prototype or approach place on the ability to test those ideas? 

Currently, the game has almost done with all the functionality such as fighting for the red ball between two players and resetting the player once touching the yellow blocks. However, once the two players touches together, the  frogs will shake in the screen. This may be the one of the constraints. The other one is that the four arrow keys are made of modeling compounds which are not very easy to control and they are not fixed with makey makey so sometimes the player cannot control some directions of the frog.

How might you change your approach/technology/style to better test those ideas? 

For the next prototype, I will fix the problem of shaking image of the frogs and fix the control panels which is changing the button instead of using compounds. I will think about adding some background music or sound effect to make the game more interesting.

Week 10 - Class Exercise

Restaurant Dining Experience

What is the existing experience? From different stakeholder P.O.V.?

The existing experience is different depending on different stakeholder P.O.V. If it is a regular restaurant, the service are almost good according to the waiters' friendliness and the taste of the food. But if it is a fast good restaurant such as some fast food in food court, I need to help myself without any waiters' service.

What external/internal factors impact on the experience?

The external and internal factors includes the friendliness and kindness of the waiters, the taste of the food, the serving speed and the atmosphere of the restaurant.

What aspects of the existing experience could be enhanced/augmented/supported with technology?

The button on each table that could be pressed by customers to tell the stuff come to the come over. Each table would have a number and once the button is pressed the light of the number would be turned on at the counter and the stuff would know which table need to go to. The digital multi-touch screen to place the order by ourselves and also can see the cooking time and the estimated serving time of each dish on the screen.

How would introducing technology in to this context change the experience?

The technology would help customers get more efficient service and would also be very convenient to use for customers as well as the waiters. By pressing the button, customers would no longer asking waiters by motion or waiting for a long time. The multi touch screen would help customer place the menu by themselves so the waiters do not have to stay there and write down each course. The customer would also have enough time to think about which one to order instead of wasting everyone's time. The cooking time would be very helpful for customers to know how long the dish would be served.

What experience scenarios might you test with the technology?

A family go to a restaurant and discuss what to eat then place the order by using the mulitouch screen. If someone need any help or wants to pay the bill at the end, pressing the button on the table and waiter would come over to help.

Week 9 - Interactive Prototype 2 development 1

For the interactive prototype 2, I have implemented 2 players into my game which is player 1 and player 2. The interface is shown below.

For this prototype, the two players are able to fight for the red ball. Once you got the red ball in the middle, the other player could grab the ball from you by easily touching you.  

Once one of the players arrives to it destination with the red ball, it wins and the game finished with showing the red text and players can enter space to restart the game.

Here is the screenshot of the game which player 1 wins.

Week 8 - Class Exercise

Come up with at least 5 different physical interactions for each (focus on tangible and/or embodied)

Email
1. An email switch just like a light switch on the wall. Once you turn it off, the emails will be prevented from all your devices.
2. A digital box just like a mobile charger that has ten little lights on it. The red lights up means the percentage of your unread emails.
3. A digital alert that alerts you once you got an email.
4. A physical box that stored all your important emails and once you want them just open it with your key and the email will be printed out.
5. An interactive device that could be recorded your message by talking to it and the device will automatically sent the message by email to someone.

Twitter
1. A digital  physical bird that will chirp once you got a new message.
2. A screen that you can see your followers and your friends' posts.
3. A recording device that is connected with twitter so you can talk to it and the device will post your words to your community.

Super Mario Bros
1. An inductive pad that you can run and jump on it that the character in the game will act like you.
2. A paper based controller that you can control the Mario by pressing keys on the paper.
3. Physical lights that shows the lives of the Mario and once the lights are all turned off, game over.

Interactive Prototype 1 - Feedback & Evaluation

Feedback

During the second practical session last week, I have got some feedback from other student for my interactive prototype 1. What I asked them are basically four questions.

What is your feeling of controlling the frog? Is it easy or hard to control it?

Most students think it is easy to control and some students think it moves a bit slow.

How do you feel the speed of the movable blocks? Is it too slow or too fast?

Most students think the speed is suitable because if it is too slow, the game may reduce its challenge. Few students think that I could make it slower because they feel it is easy to touch the blocks.

What other features could be added into this game? Is the game challenge enough?

Some students think it will be a good idea to add some sound effect such as background music and the sound while the frog is moving, etc. The blocks could also be made more interesting such as changing them to different monsters. They think the overall game is fun and is challenging enough.

Do you understand the game idea through playing with this basic prototype?

Some students could understand the concept of this game but some students think it could be better if I could add a message such as 'player wins!" showing on the screen after the frog gets the ball and arrived at its destination.

Evaluation

After getting these feedback from other students in the class. I have got some ideas that could be improved in my next prototype. Next, I would implement the function of showing the 'player win' message on the screen and I will also implement another frog so make the game can be played by two players. I am also thinking about adding the feature of sound effect into this game. As the next prototype should be played by MakeyMakey so I need to test the speed of both of the frog and the blocks to make sure it will be also easy to control by other physical equipment. After had last week's lecture, I also realised that I need to add some quantitative questions for the testing session because currently, I only have some qualitative questions. 

Week 7 - Class Exercise

My user-testing questions from the video prototype are shown as below (in red):

How much do you understand the concept of this game through the video?(scale provided)

How do you like the concept of this game? (scale provided)

These two are both quantitative questions because they deal with numbers which measures incidence.

What could be improved for this video and the concept of this game?

What other features could be implemented into this game?

Do you have any suggestions for the interface?

These three are all qualitative questions because they all deal with descriptions that can be observed but not measured. They are open ended questions so that testers need to give feedback and suggestions about what they feel and what they think.

To rephrase my questions, I think maybe I could make the questions more specific instead of just asking do you have any suggestions for the interface. Maybe change it to What do you think of the interface of this game? What other elements do you think could be added into the interface?

Week 6 - Interactive Prototype 1 development 2

During this week, I have implemented the function of grabbing the red ball. The interface is as shown below.

The frog is now able to grab the red ball  in the middle. Once the frog touches the red ball, the ball will be with the frog which is as the screenshot below.

Once the frog gets the ball, it need to go back but cannot touch the yellow blocks. If the frog touches any of the yellow blocks, it will be replaced to its starting point and the red ball will also be replaced to the middle. Here is the part of the code that I have been added since the last implementation.

However, there is no respond showing the player wins the game after the frog arrives its destination at this stage. This will be implemented in the next prototype as well as the other player.

Week 5 - Interactive Prototype 1 Development

For the Prototype 1, I aim to implement the function of controlling the frog by pressing direction keys on keyboard. There will be four yellow blocks moving randomly on the screen to impede the frog go forward. At this stage, there is only one frog you can play with it and once you touch one of the blocks, the frog will be replaced at its starting point. The red ball hasn't been implemented at this stage yet but players could still easily understand this game and interact with it using keyboard. Because this is the game for two players so the left frog will be controlled by W S A D as up down left and right. Here are the screenshots of the interface and ActionScript I have developed so far.

For the next step, I will keep testing and adjust the speed of the frog and the blocks to make sure the game is easy to control but also achieving the challenge.

Video Prototype - Development and Feedback

Development

The tool that I used to make this video prototype is Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. At the beginning, I made several interfaces by illustrator that showed a scenario of the game. Here are some interfaces.

Next, I put them into Photoshop and played them one by one to tell the scenario with my explanation. However, the video was very boring because each picture was motionless without any animations on it. Therefore, I decided to take some videos to make the prototype more interesting. I made some paper cuttings and played them by hands to give the audience a more dramatic explanation. Here is a screenshot of one of the videos.

Then, I imported all the videos into Photoshop as long as some other pictures I have made in illustrator. I am not very good at using Photoshop to edit a video so I just add some text animations into the video as well as the fade between each video to make it look smooth. Finally, I recorded my voice-over by Audacity and imported them into the video. Here is a screenshot of my Photoshop while editing my video prototype.

Feedback

During the practical session, the video was tested by some of my classmates. I asked some questions about my video. 

Does the video interest you and catch your attention?

How do you think of the concept of this game?

How do you understand the concept of this game through watching this video?

Do you have any suggestions for this game that could be improved?

Most audience thought the video is easy to understand and had a clear concept of this game. However, some of the testers thought it was a little bit boring because the beginning of the video has no animations and takes too long to play. Most of them love the idea of Hungry Frogs and would like to play it. For the improvement of this prototype, they thought I could add more animations as long as a background music to make this video more interesting. For the game, they thought it would be more interesting if the red food would go around for players to grab.

Reflection

Through making this video prototype, I have learnt much about how to make a good prototype and demonstrate with the existing technology. The progress of making a good video prototype contains some steps such as writing script, making a scenario, sketching and taking videos. According to the feedback from the audience, I think my video still got lots of things to improve. If I have a chance to make the video again, I would add more features into my video such as background music, text animations and a more attractive voice over. I should also improve my skill of Photoshop to make the screen more aesthetic. 

Week 4 - Class Exercise

1. Redesign a functional element of a car dashboard

There are many components that are relevant to driving behaviour such as GPS system, buttons on the steering wheel and also voice user interfaces. Here is an example that descirbes one of the interactions. I would design a car that has a function of recognizing a driver's voice commands. If the driver wants to turn down the music, he could just say 'turn down the music'and the music would be automatically turned down. In this situation, the driver does not need to turn down the volume by hands while he is driving. This could also be implemented into the GPS system so that the driver does not need to type the address.

To test this interaction, I would make a few different commands such as calling someone by saying 'call Lucy Chen' to test its recognition.

2. Design and describe a horizontal, a vertical and a diagonal prototype for the alarm clock application

Horizontal Prototype

The user goes to the first interface that shows the overall information of each alarm. Then the user presses edit button and chooses Alarm 1 and it goes to the second interface. The second interface shows the detail of the Alarm 1. The user could change the time and set different tones for each alarm. The third interface is provided for the user to choose the alarm that wants to be daisy chained.The last interface is for the user to snooze by shaking the phone or slide to dismiss.

Vertical Prototype

Only testing the last interface of shaking to snooze and the function of sliding to dismiss the alarm.

Diagonal Prototype

A user wants to add an alarm that has a different tone with other alarms. He firstly goes to the first interface and presses the add button and then sets the time and presses the sound button to change the sound he wants.

Week 3 - Video Prototype Ideas

In the first contact session this week, I came up with an idea by combining the game Hungry Hungry Hippos with the game Frogger. There will be only one character in this game who is a hippo. He needs to go through each movable block without touching it and get the food as much as he can to get high score.Once the hippo touches the block, he will go back to his starting point and lose one life. Each food will be between the movabale blocks so that to make the game become more challenging. The sketch below roughly describes this game. 

However, in the second contact session, the tutor said I did not put the key thing of Hungry Hungry hippos into the game. The purpose and the fun of playing Hungry Hippos is to fight with each other to get the food. Therefore, I changed my initial idea of making only one character. I added one player into the game and changed the character to frogs. There will be two frogs in this game and fight for the food. There is only one food in the middle of the screen. The two frogs have to go through the movable blocks in front of them and catch the food. Once one of the frogs catches the food, the other frog can chase him and grabs the food by touching him. If the frog touches the blocks, he will go back to his starting point as well as the food. The frog who arrives his starting point with the food will win. Here is the sketch for this game.

 

Week 2 - Mixed Reality

Mixed reality or augmented reality is to combine the real world with the virtual world to produce a new environment and visualisations to be interacted with. There are many home devices that can be designed to be a mixed reality prototype.

Mirror is one of the home devices that we could interact with. In this image, the mirror shows the date, the weather, the time and the user could even use it to surf the internet as well as watching her face.To control the mirror, users just easily touching the screen and do whatever they want.

Week 1 - What do you think a prototype is?

What form does it take?

A prototype is an early sample or model that gives people a concept and a learning experience of the final product. It could be in the form of a physical deisgn or an electronical design.
  

What do you need to make one?

An idea that could be built, designed and tested to deliver the concept of the final product such as a paper model or some mock-up screenshots.

What is it used for?

It is used for making your idea become visible or realizable and thus helping to test and finalise the final product by analysing its features. 

What is it’s purpose?

The purpose is almost the same as the answer above that is to test and analyse the concept of your product.

When would you create one? 

When you want to realize your idea and it would be your first step to start your project.

Example 

 

The image above is a paper prototype of a mobile application. It shows the sign up interface of the app and once the tester presses the button as shown in the image, it will go to the next corresponding paper interface.