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Week 14: Post-mortem

overview of the project Sparks is a team at Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center. The team members consist of Valerie Li, Ash Wang, Peter Xiao, Jerry Yu, and Yukti Gupte. We collaborated with Dr. Samira Kiani from the University…

Week 13: Soft Opening

This week (Apr.18 – Apr.24) we finalized on all the details and built a soft version of the experience. We sent out the link to high schoolers to playtest on our target audience, and also to ETC faculty for soft…

Week 12: End of Development

This week (APR.11 – Apr.17) we have finished all the development of functions and kept iterating the user experience and functions we have. We plan to do a playtest at the end of this week with our target audience and…

Week 11: Playtest

This week (Apr.4 – Apr.10) is all about playtest. We had our official playtest day last Saturday and arranged for 17 playtesters of ages 20 to 50 to experience our world. We also scheduled a meeting with Ruth, our project…

Week 10: Improve User experience

This week (MAR.28 – Apr.3) we have a playable version and we did an informal playtest at the beginning of this week, and then collected some feedback from the players. We tried to focus on iterating the user experience and…

Week 9: Getting ready for playtest

This week (Mar.21 – Mar.27) is a week of fully-devoted development. Our plan is to get an MVP(minimum viable product) version done by the end of this week and be prepared for the first round of playtesting next Monday as…

Week 8: Back on the road

This week (Mar.14 – Mar.20) we get back from Spring break and start picking up threads left before the halves. We scheduled an office hour with Carl to get more feedback from him and the rest of the faculty. We…

Week 7: 1/2 – Present & Feedback

This week (Feb.28 – Mar.6) we spent most of the time preparing for the 1/2 presentation. We used the weekend to finish the last bits of the department and recorded a demo video. We also went to the Carnegie Science…

Week 6: First Department Packed

This week (Feb.21 – 27) we finished all the art assets and functions we had in mind and are packing them up in the CRISPR department. We hope to wrap it up by the end of this weekend and get…

Week 5: Gold Spike

This week (Feb.14 – 20) was a fun week. We made our goal and tasks clear last week so there was less brainstorming and more devoted development. By Wednesday’s meeting with Samira, we wrapped everything we had so far together…

Week 4: Prototype

This week (Feb.7 – 13) we settled down the virtual museum idea and focused on making our first prototype. We hope that the prototype can demonstrate the whole experience flow, but we’ll use gray boxes and placeholders for art assets…

Week 3: New direction

1/4 Walkaround This week(Jan.31-Feb.6) we had our walkaround meeting with ETC faculty on Monday. We presented our goal and metrics, along with all the research we’ve done so far. We also mentioned that the most likely medium for our experience…