#user testing

In my first draftings of the design, I imagined the heating pad like a belt thats tightness could be adjusted to your body -- something similar to a money belt.

Here is the first prototype based on the initial design, using a neoprene and jersey fabric stuffed with a thin heating pad and velcro to fasten. 

But then I thought, why not create the heating pad in the form of clothing we are already used to wearing? Underwear! Here is one of the images that inspired the next iteration.

The moodboard I created featured highwaisted panties with loud prints after conversations with women who expressed wanting to have something like a fun secret underneath their clothing. 

Here are sketches of the new design, where the heating pads would be placed and how they would be powered, either in serial or in parallel.

The heating pads I used were a woven polyester with conductive thread sealed in a plastic film. I tested the amperage and voltage while the heating pads were wired in parallel and in series to see how much power I would need. 

I found a pattern for a high waisted panty online, bought cheap fabric, and started sewing away. Again, I had very little sewing experience before undertaking this project. 

I created a little pocket between the inner and outer fabric layers to hold the heating pad. But in the next iteration, I removed the plastic protective layer and sewed the heating fabric directly on to the inner fabric of the underwear.

I used a 3.7v battery with a power boost from Adafruit to bump it up to 5v so I could power the heading fabric. I used silicone wire as connections. 

For future iterations I’d like to experiment with all fabric connections and loose the silicone wires if possible. It would be great if we could have a soft battery as well. I’d also like to make a boy short/boxer brief style.

Well, it's a form of testing that involves getting individuals to test the game. These individuals are sat in front of a copy of the game, which can be in a state all the way from a simple tech demo right up to an almost complete product, and are simply asked to play it.

The time allocated for play varies from test to test and can be anything from play for x minutes to play until you finish y levels. For my testing players were required to play for the first 4 levels of the game, which averaged out to be around 12 - 15 minutes of play.

While playing the game the play session may be recorded and a webcam may also be employed to take video of the player’s face to gauge their reactions as they are playing through the game. For this testing plan, we were required to take two rounds of testing one with just game play, the second with the addition of the face camera.

But it isn’t all fun and games, (well it is all games...) in user testing sessions, after completion of the game session the player is given a set of questions for them to fill out, in my case I simply used a google forms form.

There are, of course, more things to take into consideration when performing user testing, like:

Should you be in the room for testing? 

Are your feedback questions presented in such a way that they don’t influence the tester's opinion? 

What are the forms of bias that will crop up in the data from this specific group of testers vs the next group?