Week 10

After last week’s playtest, we have a long running list of changes to implement and spent most of the week just working.

We met with faculty on Monday to discuss how the playtest went, and updates on our progress. The faculty advised us to be thinking about how we can bring our experience to the next level, to start thinking about how to go deep as well as go wide. With our well-tested interactions, how can we now make sure that we’re hitting the mark with our content.

We also started discussing design documentation and the video trailer. All crucial last steps for a successful hand off of the experience to the client, and to the ETC.

On Wednesday morning, Greg Russo (another exhibit designer at the CMP also named Greg) dropped off the umbrella prototype that Greg Witt built for the playtest day. We carried it up the stairs in pieces and reassembled the prototype. While we won’t be using this prop for ETC Playtest Day, since we will be expanding the experience to 20ft and the prop is only 10 ft, it will be helpful to have it onsite to show faculty when the final umbrella prop may look like. For ETC Playtest Day, we will demo with the full 20ft experience using short throw projectors that we have just ordered, and an untethered umbrella tracked by Vive.

On Wednesday, we had a client meeting with Rebecca and Talia from the Children’s Museum. Overall, they were really happy with how our experience performed at the Children’s Museum Playtest. Cathy Droz, Director of Special Projects at Fred Rogers Productions, and also consultant to the Children’s Museum on their Kindness exhibit, was on site that day observing all of the prototypes, and expressed to the Children’s Museum staff that she thought that our experience was the most clear and successful in its objectives of teaching kindness. Yay us!

Rebecca and Talia commended us on the work that we’ve put into the project, and only had a few suggestions on improvements. Such as modifying the characters to look a little more similar in style, shortening the sun cycle, and thinking about how to promote more users at a time with the umbrella (or to think about if that’s even the point of the experience).

We also chatted with Greg offline to determine the exact specifications for handoff.

Since our projectors did not arrive this week, we were unable to begin playtesting our 20ft experience. We hope that they will arrive next week, so that we can playtest at least once before ETC Playtest Day.

Until then, plenty of work to do in the Neighborhood,
One Small Act