6. Technical prototyping & testing

As our idea for the project was rather difficult to explain via usual paper prototype I have created version with actual rotating buttons and slide able films for each character in the story. I believe that this prototype was successful.

It was quite surprising to see how this paper prototype actually shows issues the design could suffer from and it’s easy to change them just with erasing the pencil and draw-test new design. I didn’t expect that it would be that helpful. With each testing I get deeper under the skin of the design and looking at my own work through external eyes give me lots of freedom to do many changes and don’t feel hurt or upset. I’m happy to see that the change I did was good and it’s working.

The collaboration of our team on the design was great. I wasn’t actually only one person designing the product, all of us were coming with suggestions and discussing them. I believe that it was great way to reduce problematic parts of the design as each person was able to spot different issues and discussion lead into good solutions.

There were some changes I suggested during the process. One of them was to use colours of the clothes as guide to characters and give the colour to controllers to make easy to identify which controller is for which character. I saw that it works great on the paper prototype and on the scene which is dark and characters are very small it would be very helpful. Shira was worried that it would be too ‘gamy’. I disagree with her.

After the second test I was wondering if the confusion about controllers was only technical issue or there is bigger problem. First of all I was surprised when the participant described the controller as ‘trash can’ and realized how the visual language of it changed just with 90 degrees rotation. After the interface test I became skeptical about its functionality. Other members of the team disagreed with me and said it’s only technical issue as the scrolling is not fully functional yet but I disagree. I was thinking of complete removal of the rotating controller and using double arrow buttons instead. With Shimpey’s idea of using the time code to show time movement and use of colour to identify the character on the scene with the controller and implementing close-ups when characters meet and look at each other and possibly talk to each other to emphasise our wished ambiguity I believe we would have at least 100% better product.

The second test lead by Michele and Jophie was very smooth, they learned a lot from the first test. With Shiras inputs and suggestions the tests were very successful.

I would have only one suggestion for next test: Michele should not describe ‘This is interactive video.’ and ask ‘What you can see?’ but ‘What do you think it is?’ and ‘What do you think you can do?’. With question what you can see people were concentrated on the video and not on the full interface.