This week, we had our Softs on Thursday, where we demoed to faculty and received lots of feedback. With the tweaks they suggested, we are ready to put the final touches on our experience and deliver a completed Luceal prototype.
Softs & Takeaways
Faculty visited our room from 9 am to 3:30 pm on Thursday. Everyone got the chance to wear the headset and interact with Luceal. While each faculty member had different thoughts on the experience, our feedback is generally as follows:
Guidance & Clarity
Many noted the experience needs clearer guidance from the application itself, rather than relying on intuition. The wake-up interaction (squeeze-and-hold) frequently confused users. Many faculty suggested UI cues like “Touch my ears!” or arrows could help. Several mentioned frustration with hidden or unclear buttons, which reduced the pet to a “button-pressing” interface rather than feeling alive.
Physical-Virtual Connection
A recurring disconnect emerged between the physical and virtual pet. Users wanted more mirrored interactions (e.g., touching either version triggers reactions) and better visual harmony (e.g., matching colors/features). The separate identities felt jarring without a narrative justification, and several users noted the virtual pet’s lack of fur.
Expanded Touch Interactions
Many users attempted touch interactions (tickling, rubbing, peekaboo with ears) that were not implemented. Moreover, some users found the wake-up sequence too aggressive, as they wouldn’t do that with a real pet. Many also wanted progression (e.g., escalating animations) and randomness to feel more “alive.” Sound effects and VFX (sparkles, glitter) were suggested to enhance magic.
Customization & Long-term Engagement
Users requested deeper customization (3D mesh shapes, eyebrow options) and long-term engagement features like feeding, cleaning, or timers for needs. Without goals or narratives, the experience felt like a novelty; adding simple verbs (“comfort,” “play”) could sustain interest.
Art & Design
Weight, texture, and touch-point visibility mattered. Suggestions included pearl paint/glitter to guide touch, softer materials, and ear flexibility. The waking-up grey color was deemed creepy, with white/sparkles preferred.
Goals for Finals
Based on the faculty feedback, we’ve identified the refinements we will make in the remaining 2 weeks before finals. They are, in order of priority:
1. Explicit Guidance
We will add text to teach the user what to do (ex: touch Luceal’s ears). This will take the form of both a rectangle UI text box and a voiceover from a narrator. We want a guided experience, instead of trying to predict the user’s intuitive actions, as we’ve concluded each user has different intuitions of how to interact.
2. A New Overlay
Jesse suggested a method that will allow us to have an experience with full overlay – the original “holy grail” design. Currently, we’re using hand tracking to determine the location of the virtual pet, which spawns the sleeping virtual pet in the same location as the physical pet. However, as the two soon separate when the player touches the plush in different ways, this has led to confusion over whether to touch the virtual pet or the physical pet. Instead, Jesse suggests to tell users to pick up the stuffed animal with one hand, and to use just that hand to track the virtual pet’s location, while to use the other hand to interact with the plush. The affordances of Luceal’s plush design are such that it’s clear how users would pick it up with one hand. Having one dedicated holding hand and one interacting hand could allow for full overlay and thus unify the experience.
3. Interaction Changes
We will update the wakeup sequence to be Belly scratch instead of squeeze, and the sequence will be longer with the tutorial text. Luceal will also talk to the player with speech bubbles, requesting interactions such as “feed me” and “touch my tail”, which would allow for more narrative and thus the “magical interactions” that Jesse identified as the goal of our experience.
4. Changing the Customization Functionality
Currently, the customization sequence seems to confuse the pet’s identity as it suggests Luceal is mutable. One suggestion Jesse gave us was to have Luceal change colors with different color foods. This is something we plan to integrate instead of the customization scene if we have time. Alternatively, we may simplify to a drag to randomize color function like in Hello Dot.
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