This week we tested with our second batch of context prototypes, Stroke, Crushing, and Breathing (also called energy transfer). On Wednesday, we did the halves presentation. On Thursday and Friday, we finished up more playtests along with coming up with a final experience design from the three candidates we had from last week.
Second batch of context prototypes + Playtest
As with our first batch of slap, pinch, and heartbeat, stroke, crushing, and breathing is also tested with different contexts, and understanding playtester’s natural behaviors.
Stroke
For stroke, we had a cute creature (from another ETC project Spleunx), along with a cold hard cube. We have playtesters try stroking the two objects, and observe how that changes their perception.
Results: We found that the cube itself, because of how un-strokable it “looks”, no one thought that they could stroke it. Even when stroking, they found it difficult to find the right way to interact with it is. We therefore concluded that for a haptic pattern with a path on the hand, the object outlines have to match their expectations up until shape and texture.
Crushing
For crushing, we believe that this action is already a powerful one, so we wanted to see how to make this interaction most satisfying. We gave the players a planet to crush, and have it play a sound building up to the debris flying moment.
Results: With this interaction, we did not do any A/B testing, but focused on understanding what how people crushed a planet. When people are able to crush it, they feel “powerful”. However, a lot of people found it difficult to because of Meta handtracking. For this interaction to be effective, we should design for hands to be used as Meta handtracking supports, and that will ensure a feeling of powerful.
Breathing / Energy Transfer
For breathing, we created two kinds of water energy that players can absorb and release, one clear and magical, the other disgusting, and turned on and off haptics, to test if the visual and audio context really influenced the haptic feedback impact.
Results: We found that, in fact, the more disgusting water worked better with haptics, and the clear magical water with haptics is actually distracting. This partly stemmed from our gloves not being able to create temperature that the clear water might suggest, but this finding made us realize that haptics inherently works best with strong visual and audio context, as an outside vibration from a haptic gloves is already strong enough.
Halves Presentation
Playtesting focused strategy
Our halves were quite well-received, as faculty really liked our playtesting and experimentation strategy that we explained in a timeline for our halves. We were encouraged to think more about how emotions can be tested, aside from all the haptic sensation part of the exploration.
Design insights
We compiled our design insights from all the testing, as well as the research that aided our insights and prototyping strategy into a documentation section of our current website. While we plan to migrate all things to a easier formattable Google Docs in the future, the documentation currently lives here.
Final Experience MVP Planning
With the playtest of our final explorational context prototypes done, it was time to discuss which final experience idea we chose, and what the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) plan looks like, so we can think through it throughout fall break, and start with full energy when we come back to school.
Eventually, out of the three ideas of main interaction + haptic pattern + emotion (deckhand pulling + tension + powerlessness, deity creating world + blast + powerful, grim reaper reaping hearts + heartbeat with crushing + mournful), interestingly, the first two were either too programming heavy, or too art heavy, that eventually all our votes went to the last idea!
Heart reaping it is!!
We then used our Trello board to list out all initial work that needed to be done.
Next Steps
With the first half of the semester filled with experimentation of haptics and contexts, it’s now the time for our final experience design and implementation! See you after fall break!