This week, Project Ex focused on iterating our existing designs, playtesting interactives and ordered resources to commence pedestal fabrication before Half Presentations begin.
Now that we had a good idea of the pedestal look and dimensions, Winnie iterated on the design and layout of the museum space. We presented the new designs to the Museum reps during our weekly Skype call. We also painted on of the old pallets we collected to see what type of look would work for the pedestals. We tried out a solid white color and more of a whitewash look. We agreed that the whitewashed look was better since it still showed the underlying texture of the wood which was key to our overall theme. After placing a bulk order for more IKEA bookshelves (which make up the skeleton of the pedestal/crate), we plan to travel to Home Depot to purchase lumber over the next few days.
We also continued to work on a minimal factory soundscape to fill the museum space. We experimented with filtering different types of pink and white noise and blending them with factory and warehouse atmospheres. During our next playtest for interactives or guest flow, we will be using these soundscapes to further iterate on how to fill in the echoes that exist in the Mine Factory space.
Leading up to our first playtest for the Misty Window on Friday, we fashioned a foam window frame for our iPads. Dandan finished the first prototype and loaded them on 3 iPads which we used for the playtest. We ran the playtest for 2 hours with several students and faculty coming in to test the prototype without any prior instruction. Overall, the playtest was successful and a lot of people enjoyed the experience even though they were more focused on writing on the screens rather than breathing on them to fog them up. A few of our testers even went on to share sentimental and sometimes even private messages. We got a lot of useful feedback from the faculty who also enjoyed the feel of the experience and encouraged us to enhance the emotional quality of the same. Overall, we have some challenges on instructing the guest on how to fog up the window (showing that there is some agency here), but found some positive feedback overall on the nature of the interaction. Steve has ordered the balance of ipads to complete our design, and we will continue to play with how best to design the window frame, “fogging” interaction as well as investigate how prompts might fit into this guest interaction.
Sarabeth and Winnie spent the second half of the week at the Themed Entertainment Association’s SATE conference in New York.
Looking ahead, we will be preparing for Half Presentation, visiting the gallery for a second time on Thursday, and sourcing the lumber to commence building out the pedestals. In addition, we will continue to iterate on the misty window prototype and work towards finishing the typewriter prototype to get it ready for testing. We will also continue work on fabricating pedestals and building display shelves for the space.