Maria Rutherford

Over all I’ve quite enjoyed this project, we’ve gone into an open brief and we’ve come out of it with a really cute game app. Drawing the illustrations and the little icons for the game was the fun part, dare I say I even enjoyed the animation to an extent as well. 

In the past we’ve done a car sharing app, and a theatre voting app, so it was interesting to apply interaction design skills to a game app. We’ve now learnt a little about game play well as sharpen up our animation skills from first year.

Summary of what I’ve learnt from this project:

About Information Architecture

How to user test for a game when we didn’t actually code it

Basics of game play design

Taking the app further:

Print the juice bottle label which would advertise the game, and mockup the seed packet

Add animation of the juice being bottled and packaged for the user at the end of the app

Approach a juice company and pitch the idea

Get an app and game coder to make the game

Today we spend working together to put together the video. We finalised the game animations making sure they all ran smoothly and had a cohesive design. Lewis worked on the script for our video while Aishwarya and I put together the storyboard. Vivian meanwhile worked on finishing off the information architecture of our complete screens. When Lewis finished the script he then went off to record the animation and I worked on quickly putting together the screen slides between the video animations and for the beginning of the video.

User Testing: Pruning Game

To test the harvest game and the pruning game I asked my younger brother, Alex (14)  to test the games. He is a very much a gamer and plays games on his mobile, tablet, computer and PS4. I first talked to him about the app explaining what it was and why we were designing it. Then I explained the two games and what I would like him to do.

For this user test I asked my brother to motion with his finger where on the screen he would swipe to trim the growing tree branches. The aim was to test and see if timing was not too fast, and that the branch growth was was easy enough to keep track of.

One thing that affected this user test was that he wouldn’t be able to visual see the result of his actions. When Alex would swipe to motion were the brach would be trimmed he didn’t get the feedback of the branch disappearing to show he’d trimmed it. But this test was more focused on ensuring the animation wasn’t too fast.

User Testing: Harvest Game

To test the harvest game and the pruning game I asked my younger brother, Alex (14)  to test the games. He is a very much a gamer and plays games on his mobile, tablet, computer and PS4. I first talked to him about the app explaining what it was and why we were designing it. Then I explained the two games and what I would like him to do. 

For this game I gave him a little paper basket which he would use to catch the apples, the aim was to make sure that the apples were not falling too fast and still presented some challenge for the user. 

In real life the basket would be on screen and moveable by the user tilting the screen. This means the basket would have a certain sensitivity to how fast it would move, this is an element we unfortunately cannot test for.

This is my first run through the full animation. I have only kept it short at 21 seconds as we have four games to run through as well as an introduction, and the video is only 2 min long. To signify the end of the game/video the user is shown to make their third and final mistake missing a ripe apple; at this moment the screen flashes red. We realised that in Aishwarya’s moth game, when a moth would land on a fruit the screen would quickly flash red so the user would realise that they’d made a mistake. When the user is playing the harvesting game, it is obvious when the user missed an apple as it would remain on the ground for a few seconds. However is is not very clear when the user accidentally catches an unripe apple, making a mistake. Though the errors are counted at the top of the screen, during game play the users eye will be focused on the basked and the apples, not so much paying attention to the counters.

For our last lesson we decided to construct a battle plan for our deadline which is quickly approaching on the 17th of June (extended from 16th). We made a list of all of the work we have yet to complete and then set about delegating tasks in a structured order.

Aishwarya: Animate watering game,

Lewis: Write instruction screens, and work on game script Vivian: Make digital screens, start information architecture Maria: Finish harvesting game

Ready for the presentation with Emma, I worked this week on putting our presentation together. Lewis has been absent as he was unfortunately very sick, Aishwarya worked on putting together a short animation, and Vivian worked on drawing up more icons. I met with Vivian and Lewis before class and together we put together the last few slides and made sure we had covered the appropriate content. 

Our presentation went well and our end questions from Emma were:

How to give instructions to the users on how to play each game?  Before the games a transparent screen with instructions will appear for the user. It will also include hand gestures for how to action certain tasks during the game.

How much text is to much text? The users for the game vary in age so we must make sure that appropriate language is used. We can also use as little text as possible to keep it simple.

How we will encourage users to return to game play after failure? To prevent people from rushing through the game in one day we were contemplating the idea that when user a failed a game, they would only be allowed to continue after waiting say 24 hours? But it brought up that people perhaps may not return.

What are our next steps towards completing this project? - Finish off animating all of the mini games - Prototype testing; Harvest game, pruning game - Prepare the script and plan the 2 minute video - Finish digital screens - Organise the information architecture map - Make the video!

We progress further with developing illustrations for the mini games which we will animate for our video. Making a list of all the icons which needed to design we worked on these during class. We made a plan to begin our animating ready for next week as we have a presentation which Emma will be attended to give us feedback. 

To try and time manage the group we made a schedule on google sheets for the group. This gives us a clearer visual on the time we have left and the list of things we need to complete. 

We have decided upon an illustration style for the mini games which we will be animating. We are sticking with a simple flat designed illustrations with bright colours. 

Unfortunately I had to leave early this lesson, my fault as it was a complete miscommunication. I wish I could have stayed longer and feel a little bit guilty about it. Nevertheless, I know what I need to have ready for next week; I need to alter the tree illustration which I did a few weeks ago, it could be a good one to use for the animation. It needs to be simplified as when we animate for the pruning game in particular, the user needs to be able to clearly see the branches. There is too much detail in these trees. 

Looking into tree growth illustration art may help me do this.