The End of the Semester

We all can't believe the semester has finally ended! It's been a very fun and rewarding semester, and we'll be sad to go. After this semester, the team will be separating, with some of us ending up on the opposite coasts (Orlando and Los Angeles). Nevertheless, we really enjoyed working on the project, and appreciate that this opportunity was given to us. We worked hard, played hard, and learned a lot!

We also received a lot of help and feedback from many people and would like to thank:

• Give Kids the World Village for the opportunity, espeically Kathy Aubruner, Jeff Staples and and the entire Give Kids the World;
• Bob's Space Racers, especially Jack Mendez
• All of the faculty, staff, and students at the ETC, especially Brenda Harger for being our faculty advisor
• John Dessler for his flash help
• Oscar Ramirez, Edmundo Ruiz, Julie Charles, and Bob Haley for the voice acting and translations
• MaryCatherine Dieterle, Rebecca Lombardi, and the Carnegie Libraries project for bringing us children for testing
  
• All of our user testers for their helpful feedback

We're going to end this blog with a poem that was given to us by the Give Kids the World village staff. They were words that really moved us, and hope that others can find encouragement within these inspirational words.

What Matters

One hundred years from now,
It will not matter
What kind of car I drove,
What kind of house I lived in,
How much money I had in my bank account,
Nor what my clothes looked like.
But the world may be a better
Because I was important
in the life of a child.

"Follow your heart... It knows the way" - Motto of the Give Kids the World: Sweet Dreams team

Final Presentations and Lessons Learned

Our final presentation went well, and we're all looking forward to the break. While we're sad to go, we all learned a lot of really important lessons this semester.

Skills Learned

• How to animate in Flash
• Lighting Control Software and Hardware
• How to outsource (construction, sound,…)
• Multitasking and time management

Lessons Learned

• GKTW = AWESOME
• Difficult to combine disparate themes
• Interactivity != Experience
• You can make a great experience for an audience with limits
• User testing is invaluable
• How to work with your friends
• ... and there's always room for ice cream!

The Home Stretch

We spent the last two weeks between Soft Opening and Final Presentations cleaning up the animations,

adding sound effects and language translations, finishing up the documentation, tightening up the DMX, code robustness, backup. Since final construction won't begin till may, we've also started making packages to send to Bob's and GKTW. We'll be sending over all of our hardware, software, content (i.e. sound/video files), and 150+ pages of documentation for the entire process and creation. Since GKTW won't see a physical product till at least May, in addition to all of our documentation, we decided to send them a teaser containing promotional posters, a back-story video, a trailer featuring Hermes the Owl, and some artistic elements to create give-aways and theming needed for an experience.

Because the physical construction won't take place till May, there are still a few things left to do. We as the ETC have committed to finishing this project, and below are some of the things that are left.

The ETC has committed to:

• Work with Bob’s Space Racers, when they are ready
• Integrate computing with mechanical pillow delivery
• Integrate sensors with input devices
• Install Sound System into tree
• Install screens, etc into tree
• Install the final Tree at GKTW
• Install Lighting in space
• Program Lighting for show
• Make sure that final art for experience matches real pillow tag
• Computing backup and redundancy
• Mirror entire system
• Create backup system

The GKTW Sweet Dreams Team has committed to:

• Finish Documentation
• Needs to be very detailed and complete for external manufacturers and future ETCers
• Already +150 pages
• Will take MANY drafts to convey all that the 6 of us know about the skills required to make the tree
• XML Lighting Generation Software
• For programming and timing the eventual lighting in the space
• We have a great playback system and specification, but it’s tricky to create right now
• Be prepared for construction in May+

User Testing II

We did our second set of user testing this week. The goal of this user testing was to specifically test the interface including story, character, controls, user actions, and height to make sure it was appropriate for children.

We formally did in depth questioning and observation of five children (2 girls, 3 boys), ages 4 to 12. We also laid out surveys and wrote down observations after the BVW show. Over 40 children and adults went through the pillow tree experience.

We learned that:

1. Our experience is fun. Some children played through the experience over 15 times in a row, even though they weren't receiving any gift from it. They just enjoyed the actions such as pulling the vine and turning the heart.

2. Our experience is intuitive. We asked all of the children to lead us through the experience they had played through, and to explain in detail the reasoning of why they did it. All of the children, even as young as 4, knew what actions they were supposed to do, when to do it, and why they were doing it. Additionally, the children were able to find all of the interactions (i.e. buttons, the vine, the heart) on the first try. The only confusing part was when the children were supposed to put their hands on the heart-shaped button to make a wish. All of the children let go too early. We resolved this issue by shortening the length of time required to hold on, and allowing the child the option to let go whenever they wished. We also fixed the broken vibration motor and added visual and sound effects to show how long the child needed to hold on to the button.

3. The experience left kids wanting more. When asked, all of the children thought the experience was just right or too short.

We plan to implement all of these findings to make our user experience better.