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InterACT’s “The Talking To,” was successful
in demonstrating the promise of the Interactive Theater brought into an interactive,
digital medium. At the end of twenty-one weeks, the end product contains a
fully developed database for the three characters, accessed by a Synthetic Interview capable of
distinguishing questions on the topic of diversity and sensitivity in the workplace.
Other features included on the DVD are biographies and resumes from the characters, and a series of
Learning Points.
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The first cycle's build of "The Talking To" was invaluable for
preliminary user-testing with members from the target audience. Once the second cycle
build became operational, it became the new testing platform, and was tested from terminals in lab and from
laptops abroad the campus.
From the testing, actual user questions were logged and analyzed, and added
to the answer scripts. Also, it could be noted if there were any patterns in users' questions that could be used to
develop Synthetic Interview's question history. Most users tend to follow up on one or two perspectives
that they personally find worth investigating, and the only notable pattern in questioning arises
from a user hearing one character's answer, and asking another character some variant of "What do you
think about that?" The characters were given the ability to search the other characters' databases, and in doing so,
point out when another character would be better able to answer the posed question.
From a user-interface standpoint, all the test users mastered the Questions & Answers interface in a moment
or two. Due to the mouseover animations and the clearly labeled arrow indicating the current character, no
trouble was had in understanding that there were three characters to talk to, or how to switch between them.
The bottom toolbar was found easily by most users, but a few did not use the lower toolbar without prompting, and may have missed out
on being able to review the scenario or move ahead to the Learning Points. Making the buttons look more like
the same style as the larger buttons in the interface improved user awareness of the options.
After the toolbar, the largest interface issue faced were users that simply could not always come up with questions to ask, and therefore
missed out on the interactive experience. Although adding yet another button seemed like a poor solution, in proved effective in the field: Users who
ran out of questions were inspired by the suggested questions; sometimes taking them as is, and sometimes modifying them before asking. Some users were especially
grateful for the "Suggest" button, as they felt SI was expecting a specific grammar and structure of them, and that these suggestions showed sure ways to pose questions.
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