Week 10

Feedback from Faculty!

We got really good feedback from our faculty after our halves presentation. Here is a list of feedback that we got:

1. To deliver: an iPad app for children ages 6-10 controlling what will be produced from a laser cutter.  As you iteratively test with various groups, are you adjusting this to slightly older (8-12) or is it solidly in 6-10?
2. When reporting lessons from play tests, give numbers and demographics where appropriate: how many, boys/girls, ages, parental involvement or not.
3. The experience will be facilitated, and museum staff will gate the cutter to review work.  Good to see that there are many play tests scheduled to iterate through your system development.  Is museum staff also involved so they can iterate through expectations on their time (and to see whether one cutter can support anticipated demand on weekends, when school groups visit, etc.).  Getting museum staff involved now can help drive unforeseen requirements, e.g., perhaps they know there will be a crunch time when there are lots of visitors all leaving in 2 hours (school group), and the interface should be tuned to “what can be cut in 5 minutes for sure” rather than “what can be cut in perhaps 10 minutes” to allow twice the number of visitors to be accommodated.  If the museum were mine, I’d want a high volume/low volume setting and means to control amount of etching/time-consuming actions so that during high volume those actions are restricted.  If you do follow through with this, make clear whether your system is in high throughput versus low throughput setting.
4. Do you need to erase lines with “glue”?  Can’t you simplify by unioning the shapes by default and not requiring glue?
5. ETC projects often shine because they offer a few playful elements, and I forget your palette of shapes.  Perhaps along with square, triangle, etc., you offer frog or alien or something off the wall to encourage playfulness.
6. Did not hear much about setting a context of badges or airplanes (this sounds too gender-specific) or whatever: interested in hearing more about how this context setting changes based on play testing in latter half of semester.
7. Overall, great work – looks like a fun experience for kids, only worried that if everyone etches their name on items or pushes the etching then the backlog at the laser cutter will become frustrating to parents, kids, and staff.
8. Need to give them more direction on what to make – or pick one of these three things (you can customize within making a “mouse” butterfly whatever) and maybe an option of “freehand” too for the older, more confident kids?
9. Let’s dissect toca boca and what works?  wrt to feedback and “success” – doesn’t matter what clothes you put on, you still win/succeed in dressing your doll.
10. Maybe you can into a grade school for 1/2 day 2xs?  (in addition to museum) that way you don’t have to worry about “will our target demo show up at museum today?”  1st-5th grades? 6-10 year olds

Lazer Mouse in GDC!

While Regis and Sangyun stayed at ETC and worked on the feedback we got from our halves presentations with MAKESHOP, the rest of the team were in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. Among all other talks and summits, we could have the chance to attend the Child’s play: Making Games for Kids Roundtable.

Next Week!

• We have arranged 2 play testing at MAKESHOP for the upcoming weekend. We will be working on the project with full steam ahead.

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• Week 11 →