Phone Elf Training

In this experience, guests were told they had turned into the little elves that transform human touch into actually dialing a phone. Because they were inside the phone, it was too dark to see, and they had to crawl around from button to button in order to hit the correct number pads.

Our goals were:

-to see how well people can locate items in space while blindfolded and what strategies they use

-to see how guests felt about crawling

Physical setup, which involved no tech at all:

With playtester:

The program we used to play sounds (by Annie):

We guided playtesters blindfolded to the center of the foam mats, at which point they were given instructions from a live actor (Dasol). Playtesters were instructed to crawl, except one tester who had a bandaged knee. They would then go through an exploration phase where they could try whatever numbers they wanted by hitting them with their hands. We would then push a button to cause the number of the key to be played over the speakers from all directions. This part took a little bit of work, but after a few playtesters we got the hang of it.

After they indicated they were done exploring, they would be given a series of 2 or 3 numbers to dial. When they got the whole sequence correct, we played a happy celebration sound. For the first few testers, we played a phone conversation from a movie, but that started to take too long.

As can be seen in the bottom picture (was added after the first was taken), we used an extra foam piece to make the top center piece (representing 8) feel different from the others. This piece was used for testers 1-8 and was removed for testers 9-13. We realized people didn’t really need it as they could also use the live actor’s voice to locate that key since he was standing by it.

After completing the tasks, which usually took about 10 minutes, we asked testers 4-13 to draw the dial pad as best they could.

Their drawings:

(5, 7, 8, and 11 have the correct sequence, and of those 8 and 11 have the most accurate shape)

Other observations:

Overall, our key observations were that

-most people used memorization of the sequence of numbers to find their way, and most used 8 as the central point (though the actor recommended that to some of them)

-when lost, most guests would either feel their way back to the 8 or use the sound of the actor’s voice to find it

-most guests did not mind crawling and found it quite fun. They also enjoyed that the story explained why they were supposed to crawl

-some guests found this exercise somewhat frustrating, but they did not have a negative experience overall and one such guest even said the experience should be harder though he struggled with it

This type of task is something we will need to test again with a wider playtester pool before implementing, because we saw many highly logical minds picking the most efficient strategy, and we doubt the general public would do the same thing at such a high rate. However, we are feeling pretty good about using large tactile cues on the floor to direct people, so this is something we may use in the final experience.

THE MEDUSA REACTOR

This was our first multiplayer playtest as well as the first with a dedicated pre-show. Our playtest signup email, seen above, was even themed, so story was a big part of this playtest.

Our goals:

-to explore the social aspect of being sightless with someone else who is sightless

-to introduce cooperation, something we are fairly certain will be a part of our final experience

When we introduced our guests to this experience, we as heads of the Medusa lab showed our newly hired lab techs a few slides about today’s responsibilities. The reactor would blind them if they looked at it, so we were going to blindfold them before they went into the lab. They were to find two pieces of a fuel rod, which are small and magnetic, and recombine them inside the reactor. They were shown an approximate drawing of the reactor. The fuel rods (magnets wrapped in painter’s tape) were hidden in sealed containers (plastic water bottles) on opposite sides of the room in a filing cabinet and a pelican case. Guests were led into the lab where ambient music meant to feel serious and a little stressful was being played, placed next to each other in the center of the room, and told they had 10 minutes to complete their task before the radiation would overcome them.

The reactor (by Dale):

During the task:

This playtest had very positive feedback in terms of emotion and enjoyment. Playtesters found the story memorable, though simple, and really enjoyed having another person with them. Unfortunately, this may be an ETC student trait, so we will need to test more, but they were also really good at working together right away to complete the task. There are many things we would need to work on to make this a polished experience and many lessons we could pull from the increasingly popular escape rooms.

Here are all of our notes, most of which are from post-test interviews:

We are thinking of iterating on this idea or at least coping its emotional arc of discomfort – discovery – achievement for our final experience. We have also realized through this test that it takes people 5+ minutes to find two objects and stick them together in an experience like this, so we will likely need a 20+ minute experience to tell the kind of story we want to tell. This is something we will work on in the coming weeks.