On Monday, we presented our progress to students and faculty for the Halves. We explained our project’s goal and direction. We got to talk through our design process and why we made this design decision and then showcased our prototype demo video.
The overall presentation went well but still there was a question why we must have AR interaction for our application. In addition, there was a gap in expectations about the art style. Our designers thought that a simple color palette and stylized art were suitable for the mobile game, but we realized that our application is about history and culture so it should reflect the authentic feeling of the Hill District. So, we decided to change our art style to more realistic.
Regarding storytelling, many people were not excited with a long dialogue conversation with NPCs in the scene and felt it was quite shallow and short to deliver the context of the time period. We had to rethink the way we deliver stories and information. Our main goal is to inform history context in August Wilson’s play, so we decided to focus on the interactive objects and deliver the information and authentic feeling of that time period.
As it was a huge change after the Halves, and we were behind the production schedule, our team started an ‘emergency 2 weeks sprint’ which requires more time commitment until we got a new functional prototype for the user test in November.
Em started drawing new 2D background and characters, and we also have begun further iteration on the story, interactive objects, and UI.
Overall, this week was more focused on redesigning the whole experience and communicating with our clients on this new approach.