This week, when planning our playtest, we had the following goals in mind: we want to continue testing mechanisms for the sense of smell; we would like to try using a tactile map and see if it helps people to have a mental picture of the room and navigate easier; we want to see if we can get people to reach for things above them, which is quite a challenge when they can't see. So targeting these goals we planned our Friday playtest: the Birdhome Delivery Service. In this playtest, the setup of the room is very simple. We first…

This week, we began testing with a new sense - smell. We held one playtest on Thursday and Friday for students and faculty. Most people (n=14) worked in pairs, but there was also an option to work alone (n=3). In this playtest, guests were told they were Smell Master Detectives and were the last hope for a serial murder case. Two women were found dead and the primary suspect (whose house we were about to search) was about to be let go due to lack of evidence. The warrant was about to expire and would only cover a few categories…

This week, because of 1/4s, we had only one playtest. Our goal: -revisit multiplayer but in a divided way, with different goals for each player to participate -test a puzzle mechanic where we give very little information   We built a wall out of paper inside the room and placed participants on either side of it (after warning them that it was fragile). Inside the room with them on both sides of the wall were various objects with cardboard tags on them, each with a three letter or number code, printed in the same way as our previous arctic algebraic…

Phone Elf Training In this experience, guests were told they had turned into the little elves that transform human touch into actually dialing a phone. Because they were inside the phone, it was too dark to see, and they had to crawl around from button to button in order to hit the correct number pads. Our goals were: -to see how well people can locate items in space while blindfolded and what strategies they use -to see how guests felt about crawling Physical setup, which involved no tech at all: With playtester: The program we used to play sounds (by…