After making changes based on our Playtest Day feedback, we felt we were very close to having a complete, final product for Softs. However, we also understood that our game and our goals were still a little confusing, so we also spent some time putting together a presentation that would hopefully make it clearer. As it turned out, our game was in a good place, but our explanation was not.
We began our presentation with a discussion of our project goals, as we found that was one of the most important things to understand when hearing about our project. We also knew our project goal was a bit confusing, as it had changed over the course of the semester, and was now about exploring metaphors, which itself is a confusing topic. During Softs, it felt like things were going well. People seemed appreciative of our experience, and curious about our exploration of metaphor. When we got feedback, however, it turned out that people were still confused about just what our project actually was.
The feedback ranged from saying we didn’t have a firm grasp of what metaphors were, to saying we came off as arrogant in our description of our project. People said we seemed defensive, as if we were expecting people to not like our product. At first, this came as a big shock, but after sitting down with individual faculty members we began seeing where the confusion came from, and learned an important lesson about the importance of messaging.
Essentially, the confusion centered around one idea we tried to communicate: “We know you might not understand this, and that’s ok.” We brought up this point because, in our playtests, the majority of people were confused by at least some portion of our game. We wanted to assure faculty that we were aware of this issue, but that shouldn’t be viewed as a shortcoming of the project because our client was aware of it as well, and was more interested in studying our process and our findings than a final product that successfully changed people’s beliefs. However, when faculty heard this, they interpreted it as “We know you might not understand this, but trust us, we’re right.” This was far from our intention, but gave faculty a negative perception of our process and understanding of the subject matter.
Over the course of the week, we talked with various faculty members to get a better understanding of their feedback. It was reassuring to hear that they all actually really enjoyed our product, and once they heard about our process in more detail, they had a much more positive view of the project in general. They suggested that our thought process hadn’t come across at all during our presentation, and that’s something we should focus on conveying for finals. They told us to cite specific examples of decisions we made, and why we made them. They said this would feel more inclusive than our original point of “You might not get it but it’s ok.”
In addition, we heard some feedback about making the interface more intuitive, so along with developing a better description of our project, we’re also making a few more UI changes. There are also a few stylistic changes we’re making to make the final product more cohesive as a whole. Our next major milestone is the Showcase next Wednesday, and it will be interesting how the general public views our product after all our changes.