{"id":302,"date":"2025-04-25T15:01:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T15:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/?p=302"},"modified":"2025-04-28T16:18:57","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T16:18:57","slug":"week-14-final-playtest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/week-14-final-playtest\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 14 &#8211; Final Playtest!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For our final week, we had the opportunity to take our tool to Kentucky Avenue School for a focused <strong>playtest<\/strong>. This session wasn\u2019t just about spotting bugs or refining UI\u2014it was about evaluating the <strong>success and educational value<\/strong> of what we\u2019ve built over the semester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Testing More Than Just Features<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Our goal was to see how students interacted with the tool, even with its current limitations. We wanted to understand:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>What can a student <strong>create<\/strong> on their own?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Do they grasp the connection between their <strong>prompts<\/strong>, the generated <strong>code<\/strong>, and the in-game <strong>assets<\/strong>?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Can they begin to engage with our core educational goal\u2014<strong>decomposition<\/strong>\u2014by understanding how their ideas break down into actionable steps?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>While we didn\u2019t expect students to suddenly master decomposition as a formal concept, we hoped they would demonstrate an intuitive understanding of how their inputs translated into outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/image-14-1024x768.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/image-14-1024x768.png 1024w, https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/image-14-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/image-14-768x576.png 768w, https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/image-14-1536x1152.png 1536w, https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/image-14-2048x1537.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Successful Playtest<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The playtest exceeded our expectations. With the help of our guide, students quickly picked up the basics of navigation. While they still needed occasional assistance with more complex interactions, they clearly understood the overall structure and purpose of the tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As seen in previous playtests, students were especially enthusiastic about adding <strong>visual effects<\/strong> to their stories\u2014prompting commands like \u201cexplode\u201d to bring their creations to life. More importantly, we observed that when students saw the <strong>codeblock fields<\/strong>, they were eager to experiment\u2014using dropdown menus to change objects and recognizing how these fields corresponded to in-game assets. This demonstrated exactly the kind of relational thinking we aimed to foster, where students begin to understand how to break down creative ideas into manageable components.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video controls src=\"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Video-Project-22.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Following the Ideal Creation Flow<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>One standout moment came when a student asked how to place a door in the forest scene. After figuring that out, he naturally progressed to thinking about how the door could lead to the castle scene. Although he needed guidance at first, he ultimately created a working story sequence\u2014thinking at a high level, then identifying and executing the steps needed to achieve his goal. This is precisely the kind of problem-solving flow we hoped to inspire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video controls src=\"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Video-Project-21.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Wrapping Up the Semester<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-1 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:66.66%\">\n<p>This playtest was a fantastic conclusion to our semester\u2019s work. Seeing students engage with the tool\u2014not just play with it, but think through their ideas and translate them into interactive stories\u2014validated our design decisions and educational focus. It was rewarding to witness firsthand how our project could support creativity and computational thinking in a classroom setting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:33.33%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"538\" height=\"339\" src=\"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/image-15.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-319\" srcset=\"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/image-15.png 538w, https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/image-15-300x189.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 538px) 100vw, 538px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For our final week, we had the opportunity to take our tool to Kentucky Avenue School for a focused playtest. This session wasn\u2019t just about spotting bugs or refining UI\u2014it was about evaluating the success and educational value of what we\u2019ve built over the semester. Testing More Than Just Features Our goal was to see [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dev-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.etc.cmu.edu\/hello-alice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}