Hi, all

After two refreshing weeks of spring break and GDC, we are back and straight run to the ½ presentation, also we had a playtest at Elizabeth Forward.

½ Presentation

This week was 1/2s! We presented our work so far the semester to all the faculty, answered some questions, and received feedback.

Our main faculty feedback is that we still need to polish the app, and some questions remain as to why we are doing this project at all – how is this better than a paper questionnaire?

We agree that we need to polish, and we are focusing on that now. But to address the other concern, our clients have told us that an app is better because it reduces strain on pediatric offices in two ways: first, completion in the waiting room without someone who needs to give or score the questionnaire means pediatricians aren’t using up the already short time they have with kids. They can just address this issue with the kids who are flagged by the screening questionnaire. Second, because it is digital, it reduces the amount of paperwork needed to be filed and stored, which will make adopting this app much more appealing to pediatric offices.

Additionally, a digital format allows us to add in more engagement and fun!

We are not surprised about our feedback and we have confidence in polishing the whole app in the next 3 weeks.

Playtest

This week we had a playtest at Elizabeth Forward elementary school with our arts and current prototype. We had 9 boys and 6 girls who are from 10-12 years old. We learned the following things.

First, all the mechanics before the question answering should instruct the children in clear and detailed ways. Second, children like brighter, happier character that directly interacts with you. Even if the art is little less delicate/realistic, it is more important for the characters to be approachable look than having realistic looks. Third, children don’t like sand faces but like seals and starfish characters. Last but not least, couple children thought our app is a bit childish for them.

Therefore, we are going to polish our app based on this test. We are changing our face character to a seal, add more subtitles, rearrange the interactions and fix the bugs we saw during the playtest. For last point, since we are testing with dummy question like “Do you like cake?” which will bias the children’s opinion on our app. We are coming up questions that are serious and will not bias children’s perception on our app.

Design

After the playtest and feedback from faculty, we came up with a new storyboard that took out the sand face and let seal take over the first half of the questionnaire experience. We also took out the warp interactions in the water. And based on our new storyboard, we rewrote the script also.

In addition, we came up with multiple ideas for rewarding activities at the end of the experience and pitched to the clients. So far, the clients like the two ideas that can be tested.

1) On the floor, there are treasures. For some parts of the ground, there are pretty treasures that look like they are from sunken treasure ship, and you have to swipe a lot harder to reveal things. But there are also funny sea creatures, objects like socks that come out. Exploring and swiping harder to find things will be fun. So not only finding the right ones will be satisfying but also finding the incorrect ones will amuse children.

2) Hide and seek dynamic version – it is hide and seek but a dynamic. Different interesting looking sea creatures that children like will show up and wander around and fill the screen space and you have to find the right ones by swiping to get the other fish away and tap to pick the right ones. At the end of the collection, the right ones will say thank you. Finding for the right one will be the fun part.

Art

We are evolving the art in two directions, and planning to evaluate which is more successful at the ETC playtest April 2nd. One style just takes the drawings we currently have and adds some detail and shadow, creating almost a glassy look.

The other possible style takes the characters we have and uses photos for them instead, while still using cartoony, animated faces for them.

​We are also planning to use more visual cues to tell children where to tap and when throughout the experience. In our final revision, all tappable objects including question choices, submit buttons, and characters used to progress the experience have a yellow glow around them.

​We hope this will ensure all kids can complete the questionnaire without problems or bias, though that will ultimately be up to AHN to determine with more rigorous testing.
Programming

In order to do the playtest with all questions swapped to innocent ones, we modified the codes a little bit, especially the sound manager to make life easier. Making this change also allowed us to finally import the lip syncing codes in our main build. We also fixed the bugs including button collider and swiping mechanism. A fading effect will be added later to make it look more natural.

After the new storyboard came out, we started to implement to base on this new one and will share more information in the next week.

Next

For the next week, we will focus more on implementing the whole storyboard as well as making at least one reward activity prototype to fit into our playtest. Also, we are preparing art assets to be ready for the playtest.