In weeks 12 and 13, the team gathered feedback from faculty and industry experts. Then, using what we learned, we incorporated those changes into a new iteration of AI or Nay-I?. After pushing out this new build, we held another round of playtesting and made some further changes ahead of soft opening on April 23.
Feedback
Artificial Intelligentsia showed AI or Nay-I to a few industry experts in week 12. Jeff Litchford, VP of Deck Nine Games, praised the user interface and interactions but found the perspective shifts from Minister to AI Simulations and back to be jarring. Jeff also offered a helpful suggestion to ask the players “Are you sure?” an extra time after signing the directives. Later in the week, Joe Olson, Art Director, and Jonathan Brodsky, Creative Engineer, from Magic Leap stopped by. They enjoyed the game as well and suggested that there may be opportunities to infuse subtle color theory tricks into the public response tweets: like cool colors for positive responses, and warm for negative.
The team also showed the game to a couple faculty members for feedback. Jesse Schell encouraged us to include a feedback screen after the minigames to compare the abilities of the player to those of a real AI system. In addition, Shirley Saldamarco also completed a demo. Shirley advised us to be clear about the purpose of AI or Nay-I? when we are showing it. The game isn’t trying to convince the players that AI is good or bad, but rather portray the complexity of the issue and foster thoughtful discussion in the players.
Using the feedback we gathered in week 12, the team made a large number of changes before playtesting on Thursday of week 13. Those changes are listed below:
Changes Before Playtest Day 2:
- Added “Are you sure?” after completing directives.
- Updated the user interface on swiping sections.
- Added accuracy score page after the phone security simulation.
- Added speed score page after the public surveillance simulation
- Made tweets movable with user’s finger.
With a new version of AI or Nay-I? in hand, we held another playtesting session on Thursday, April 18. Our playtesters were all ETC faculty and students. From these playtests, we found that the experience flowed better and much of the user friction was eliminated. However, there still tends to be a bit of confusion at the beginning of the phone security simulation. We will adjust the gyroscope calibration in our next version. Beyond that, AI or Nay-I? is achieving our transformational goals to a generally positive extent as seen in the data below. NOTE: 1 is strongly disagree while 5 is strongly agree.
Now with more playtest feedback, the team will continue to polish AI or Nay-I? ahead of soft opening. The changes we plan on making are listed below:
Changes for Soft Opening
- Adding voting comparison page.
- Adding twitter profile pictures and headline images
- Adding survey page to outro
- Adding About page
- Adding Credit page
- Adding page about Pamela McCorduck and her memoir.
- Updating sound effects and background music.