Week 12 - Contact Exercise

Week 12 - Contact Exercise

According to lecture slide 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.

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

• For the improvement hand device could be better if it is mapped on a screen with the shape of circle.

The following table is Pugh Matrix:

Interactive Prototype III

Interactive  Prototype III

For the final interactive prototype testing session, I had complete an almost complete game for user to test. All function has been coded and the testing is focus on the physical controller. The game is uses "snake board"  that allow user to use two sticks wrap with aluminium-foil paper. The new controller not only have a better look, but also allow user to do more flexible move. Before each user testing, I gave them simple instruction and set up the game for them. The testing went smoothly and quite successful. 

On the other hand, Google Forms(figure 1) was used to collect feedbacks for each users. Most of the questions was scale-type. I believed the scale-type is easy to quantise results. There also have one text-boxes type question that ask user if there is any improvements need to be made in the future. I had 8 people leave responses during this testing session and I have also take a video(Video 1) of one user testing my game.

In result, the average number for "the controller easy to use" was 8 out of 10. It indicate the controller is easy to use. However, there are still one user scaled a 6 out of 10, the user said he had to look down to check where the sticks is pointing at the direction. Therefore, making snake board to a smaller scale can be a consideration for further improvement. For "is the controller flexible enough" I got an 8.375 which is a good result overall. One of the negative feedback from the last prototype testing was the user can not make the direction flexible enough for snake to eat the letters. Therefore, it can be said there have been a significant improvement for the new controller. For "do you like the colour of the snake" is to test if user like the visual effect of my game. and the overall scale was 7.875 which is above average. So it can be said the visual effect was good. For "could you move the direction you want easily" was to test the game's function performance, and the average number was 7 out of 10 which is above average. From my observation, the reason might be the snake speed was a bit fast for user to follow so that I did not get a good mark on this question. Therefore, adjustment for the snake speed could be a consideration for future improvement. For "is it a fun game to play" and is it an exciting game" all got an average of 8 out of 10 which is a quite positive make which I expected. Overall, it was a successful testing session, all feedbacks were positive and the original game did not require to make any significance changes, but only for the form of controllers. It was a fun course and it taught me a lot like what is prototype, how the game is made and how the controllers needed to be improved overtime. 

 Video 1: Interactive prototype III in class video testing

Figure 1. Google Form

Week 10 - Interactive Prototype II Testing

Week 10 Interactive Prototype II

In this session, players have been asked to complete task by using Google Form(figure 1). 

Figure 1: Google form which to get feedbacks from players

Player have to answer first three task by choosing success or failed options. HangerSNAKE is a single player game which allow user to eat up the correct letters to try to guess the correct letters. Some changes has been made from last testing session such as I have change the score to life. Additionally, game has also change to snake will be decrease one segment when they hit on a wrong letters instead of adding one segment to the snake when they eat the correct letter. 

Figure 2: Snake box with two sticks

Player is required to use two sticks to tap the snake box(figure 2). The first task is to let the player use stick to change the direction of the snake using snack box. Every player has successfully change the direction in this testing session. The second task is to let player to eat up some letters which is to testing snake's flexibility. Every player has also complete this task successfully. The third question is to test whether the player think it is an easy game to play or not with this kind of physical interaction. In a scale 1 to 10 which 1 means the game is difficult to play and 10 means the game is easy to play. The average scale was 4.75 out of 10. In other words, the physical interaction is not so flexible and the players seems a bit confusing while using stick to control top and left direction. 

Figure 3: Rating of controller difficulty

Therefore, other way of physical implementation need to be changed to make it more suite for player interaction with the game. However, every player seems to enjoy the way of physical interaction implemented using makey makey. Some player has suggest to make the game more slower, or maybe make the controller more flexible for user to move the snake. 

In conclusion, the testing session is quite successful, and user has competed almost every task in the game. However, some improvements need to be changed in the future testing.

Week 8 - In class exercise

Week 8 - In class exercise

This week lecture we are asked to check whether the designed questions are right or wrong.

The first question:

The question did not avoid compound questions since it is asking too much freedom, too much money. The question should be asked for only one thing such as too much freedom.

Second question:

This question should avoid leading question such as "I think...". It would be better using "how often would you use this system?" and the tick box should be"sometimes, seldom and often."

Third Question:

The second part of the question should be better off if using "If you experienced problems in completing your transaction, would you call the customer support?" and for the tick box "yes, no"
For the last part of the questions it should be changed to "Is it hard to notice there is a customer support number on the top page?" the tick box or multiple choices should be "yea or no". Overall, this question is a compound questions which is not allowed in designing survey question.

Week 7 - Testing Session

Testing Session:

In this session, several players has been ask to complete the task(fig 1.) that is given by a google form. These questions mainly contain two options, one is completed the task and the other one is failed the task. HangerSNAKE, is a single player game which allow user to eat up the correct letters to earn points. 

The first task is to ask user to move the snake using "w", "s", "a" ,"d", 9 out of 9 players have completed this task, on the other hand, the first task has a 100% complete rate. The second task is to ask user to control the snake to eat the letters on the screen, 9 out of 9 players have completed this task, so 100% complete rate in the second task. The third question is to ask user to follow the black line on the stage to test whether the snake will go outside the wall or not, and there were also 100% complete rate. The fourth question is to ask user to keep eating the correct letter to increase the score, however, a bug appear that sometimes the letter would go outside the stage that snake would not able to reach it and thus the player can not earn any point. The fifth question is to ask user is to ask user whether they find it is difficult to play the game or are there any bugs in the game that need to be fixed, and it appears one big problem is that the letters always appear outside the stage that snake could not reach to it to earn more points and freeze the game. The last question ask user to choose which game style is better, score game style or lives game style, 3 out of 9 prefer the score game style and 6 out of 9 prefer lives style. 

Overall, the testing session is quite successful, and user has competed almost every task in the game. However, improvement such as changing the score to lives would be better suit for this game and limit the letter's appear range that would allow user to win the game.

Fig 1. Google form which includes several questions for each player to answer

Week 6 - In class exercise

Week 6 - In class exercise

Create CRC cards for a scenario (or 2) you what to test in future prototypes. 
The purpose of CRC cards is to allow people to break away from the procedural mode of thought and more fully appreciate object technology. CRC Cards allow entire project teams to contribute to the design. The more people who can help design the system the greater the number of good ideas incorporated.

What is a testing scenario that you want for your concept? 
Scenario testing is a software testing activity that uses scenarios: hypothetical stories to help the tester work through a complex problem or test system. The ideal scenario test is a credible, complex, compelling or motivating story the outcome of which is easy to evaluate.

What are the nouns (objects) in the scenario? 
Classes

What are the verbs (responsibilities)? 
responsibilities of that actor

Who are the collaborators?
Interactions with other actors.

Week 5 - Prac B

Week 5 - Prac B

This week practical we have a discussion about how to use action-script 3.0 to create game in flash, tutor gave us a a website called Lynda  which is quite helpful for coding stuff in action-script 3.0. 

I also found a snake game code through google and I know how to code the snake up/down/left/right direction:

private function directionChanged(e:KeyboardEvent):void

        {

            var m:Object = new Object(); //MARKER OBJECT

            if (e.keyCode == Keyboard.LEFT && last_button_down != e.keyCode && last_button_down != Keyboard.RIGHT)

            {

                snake_vector[0].direction = "L";

                m = {x:snake_vector[0].x, y:snake_vector[0].y, type:"L"};

                last_button_down = Keyboard.LEFT;

            }

            else if (e.keyCode == Keyboard.RIGHT && last_button_down != e.keyCode && last_button_down != Keyboard.LEFT)

            {

                snake_vector[0].direction = "R";

                m = {x:snake_vector[0].x, y:snake_vector[0].y, type:"R"};

                last_button_down = Keyboard.RIGHT;

            }

            else if (e.keyCode == Keyboard.UP && last_button_down != e.keyCode && last_button_down != Keyboard.DOWN)

            {

                snake_vector[0].direction = "U";

                m = {x:snake_vector[0].x, y:snake_vector[0].y, type:"U"};

                last_button_down = Keyboard.UP;

            }

            else if (e.keyCode == Keyboard.DOWN && last_button_down != e.keyCode && last_button_down != Keyboard.UP)

            {

                snake_vector[0].direction = "D";

                m = {x:snake_vector[0].x, y:snake_vector[0].y, type:"D"};

                last_button_down = Keyboard.DOWN;

            }

            markers_vector.push(m);

        }