For our first playtest this week, on Wednesday, Dale created a set of touch based cardboard and vinyl cut board that people would have to try to read with only touch. Cardboard was used as a back and characters were cut out of a rough vinyl to make a drastic difference in texture.

The boards we handed to our guests were three simple algebraic equations that they were asked to read and solve while blindfolded. We increased the drama by creating an arctic mountaintop environment with wind sounds effects, 3 fans, the fact that it’s always freezing in that room no matter what we do, and a thick board as a bridge.

The setup:

Our goals were:

-reading numbers, letters, and symbols by touch: possible? time-consuming? how complex can we get?

-does the environment matter?

Results:

Guests were not only able to do this task with relative ease (of course – they’re ETCers!) but they were much faster than we had expected. After receiving many comments about the confusing font, we decided to alter the letters and swap out the a for an uppercase A for clarity. Some characters were still not easy to recognize but it was definitely better after we made those changes.

The environment had varied success, partially because we only had two speakers, both placed on the ground, and our fans were pretty low as well. But feedback makes us very hopeful about creating an immersive and real environment.

Our second playtest, on Friday, involved guests sticking their hands into boxes with water-saturated gummy worms, a fake fur puppet, and a cornstarch and water mixture. Each box contained a component or some other item that the guest had to find and carry with them to the end of the story. This test also let us dust off our improv acting skills.

The setup:

Our goal here was:

-does framing these unpleasant tasks as necessary or even pleasant remove the fear factor?

Results (right click and open for full size):

Guests blew us away by being so not fearful that more than one ate a gummy worm while still blindfolded. This may not work on people who are not our friends, so more testing is in order of course, but they were very trusting and our main problems stemmed from giving instructions that were either so direct that they did not remember a story or too confusing to find the items at first. In our final experience, we hope to not have a live host, so this is something we will need to work to address – the level of feedback and instruction for someone who is blindfolded. Another important lesson we learned today is that people who are blindfolded will touch everything and try to open it or pull it apart. Our final experience will need to be very polished to protect from this affecting people’s experience.