MonthNovember 2020

Week 9: First User Tests

https://www.instagram.com/p/CHktu-YgI5G/

This week I got to test the experience on two users. I will summarize the most important feedback points:

  1. The head mechanic can be adjusted so that the player feels like they have more control over where they move. One of the users instinctively pressed the grip button when they saw the head in an area they wanted to move to (while it was still rolling). They did this several times throughout the game.
  2. Cosmetic changes — the world can be less saturated so as to place more importance on the characters and unorthodox actions.
  3. Wall collisions need to be re-designed. As of now, whenever the headset hits a wall the screen goes black. This needs to be improved so that the user isn’t placed in that situation as often. Maybe the wall colliders can be moved “inside” a bit so that they always teleport beside the wall, beyond the point of fading to black.
  4. A huge one that looms large over VR applications: how to clearly distinguish what is interactable from what isn’t interactable. I had tried doing this with sound, an example I had seen in other PC games, but it seems that is not enough in a virtual world. I will need to give more visual cues.
  5. Both users wanted more guidance (more visual cues and subtitles for the narration). One went as far as to suggest having a menu which would always tell you what your next task was.

Overall, they both enjoyed the head mechanic and the concept of the game. They both described the interesting meeting of an ordinary task (getting tea) in a surreal, glitch world.

One user took 35 minutes to complete the experience and the other took an hour and 15 minutes.

Week 8: Debugging for User Tests

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGGQcp3nrVF/
  • This week’s objectives:
    • Debug and prepare build for user tests next week. 
    • Create narrator script and implement. 
    • Near-final usability testing form.
  • I now have a running build with all the necessary narrative beats, including the new narrator character, and am ready to test. 
  • There are still ways to polish mechanics and narrative flow, but I will take the user feedback going forward to see what can be improved.
  • Delivered a list of necessary sound items to the sound designer, Joey Sergi.