During this week, we started implementing all the feedback we received from playtesting at the East Franklin School last week as well as from the ETC Playtesting Day that was held last Saturday. After we analyzed the playtesting sessions, we came up with a list of tasks that we need to finish this week, and planned to have them implemented before our next playtesting session, which was on Friday, April 7th. Some of the tasks included redesigning the exercise page, as the students weren’t able to figure out where the battery needs to be placed and weren’t able to differentiate the tens and ones place slots. The reason for this was that both those slots and screws have the same color and shape. Following is the new layout that we came up with, which worked out great as per the playtesting session this week.
The exercise screen first looks like this with screws on the numbers.
After the players tap the screws, they slide to the slots under the battery holders.
After tapping the screws, the players can drag the batteries in the battery holders, and press the green button.
We also started working on adding more sounds to the game. As our game is a practice game, we need to make the sounds soothing as well as engaging so that the students would want to continue practicing. We finished implementing many of the special effects as well as some background music to the game. Along with sounds, it was time to start working on the profile. We designed a rough layout of the Profile UI and started working on adding it to our game. The profile is still being worked on, as there are many factors that are involved while making it. Here is a video of the first draft of Profile: Profile UI
Additionally, we finished animating all of the 13 robots, and we also started working on adding voice overs to the robots based on their personality. All the robots in the game are now animating after all the exercises for that specific robot are solved, and the animations are based on the personality that we kept in mind while designing the robots.
We had a meeting with the math researchers at Carnegie Mellon, and they helped us a lot with giving suggestions about what they think of the game. They liked the new layout of the exercises and found the game credible for the demographic that we are aiming for. They mentioned that before we introduce the regrouping mechanic, we should explain what that is to make it easier for them to jump from exercises with no regrouping to those with regrouping. We also discussed the different mechanics for subtraction and came up with two of them that we all agreed would be best suited for the students.
- First mechanic is about subtraction from the standpoint of adding a negative number. So for example, for subtracting 4 from 13, it’ll be 13+(-4).
- Second mechanic is about subtraction from the standpoint of negating the existing number. So for example, for subtracting 4 from 13, it’ll be 13-4.
Both these mechanics are good, with the main different being how the students tap on the manipulatives to get the correct answer. As it was difficult to pick one, we decided to ask the teacher we are working with next week and pick the mechanic that she thinks will be best for her class.
We also had a short meeting with two of the second grade teachers of Elizabeth Forward school this week. One of the main topics of this meeting was how they teach subtraction to the students. She mentioned that they teach using blocks as manipulatives. So for example, to subtract 4 from 13. They would give one block of ten and three blocks of one on one side, and four blocks of one on the other side. Then the students would first take the three blocks of one away from each side, and will be left with one block of ten and one block of one. Then they break the block of ten to make ten blocks of one. So now they have ten blocks of one on one side and one block of one on the other side. Finally, students take one block away from each side, and are kept with nine blocks of one which gives the answer 9.
After this meeting, we headed to St. Joseph School for playtesting. We playtested with groups of three for 20 min slots. As we wanted to get feedback based on the grade level of the students, each groups of three were in the same grade. We first playtested with 9 kindergartners, then 9 first graders, and then 6 second graders. All the groups had similar feedback, irrespective of their grade. The most important feedback was that they found the game boring. This is something that we weren’t expecting from the students, as we aimed to make the game entertaining. We figured that they might have found it boring because of a couple of bugs in the game, as well as the sound not incorporated properly. So we planned to fix those aspects and playtest again next week and see if the students have a different feedback or not. Following are some of the pictures from our playtesting session at St. Joseph School.
