Week 15 (Apr. 20, 2026 – Apr. 24, 2026)

Carrying forward the positive momentum from last week, Week 15 was largely focused on preparing for finals and wrapping up smaller, last-minute tasks.

We began Monday morning with a playtest in the ETC Sound Studio based on an exercise suggested by Mark Piszczor. The idea was to interact with our AI character as a group, taking turns in conversation to observe how well the AI maintained narrative continuity. Sudarshan, Aidan, and Anthony each took turns engaging with the AI, often shifting topics drastically between turns. It was interesting to see that the AI adapted smoothly, embracing the changes and continuing to “play along” without breaking character. Later that morning, we met with Mark Piszczor and Kory Mathewson to share project updates and discuss our progress.

As part of our regular schedule, we also had our weekly instructors meeting with Mo and Brenda. During this session, we shared feedback from Softs and provided additional updates from the previous week. We also walked them through our plan for the final presentation, scheduled for Tuesday, April 28, 2026, at 1:50 PM.

On Tuesday, we conducted six playtests with fellow ETC students, each lasting approximately 20 minutes. It was exciting to see that most participants not only enjoyed the experience but also engaged effectively with the AI character. In one session, we experimented with a suggestion from Ruth: instead of puppeteering the stuffed goose, we had a human actor lip-sync the AI’s responses. We tested this format with three students within a “dating show” scenario. One student acted as the host (with non-AI dialogue), while the other two played AI-driven geese—Alice and Goose. This setup turned out to be one of the most entertaining and memorable playtests for our team.

The primary goal of these sessions was to observe how participants interacted with the AI goose. Feedback was largely positive—many participants were surprised by the quality of the AI’s voice and its expressive capabilities. Several also expressed curiosity about our prompting techniques, offering suggestions for refining prompts to achieve more consistent character behavior.

On Wednesday, we met again with Brenda and Mo to discuss a more refined concept for our final presentation. We proposed presenting our project as a live performance rather than a traditional presentation and wanted to assess any potential risks. Both Mo and Brenda were very supportive, encouraging us to pursue this approach. They noted that experimenting with non-traditional formats could set a strong example for future projects. With their encouragement, we began designing our slides and writing skits to structure each team member’s segment.

The remainder of the week was dedicated to final preparations: fixing minor bugs, refining the design document, editing our final video, and continuing efforts to stabilize the Arduino-based animatronics.

With that, we wrapped up Week 15 and are looking forward to delivering a memorable and engaging final presentation next week.