Midterm Evaluation Reflection
Colin Winders
As I summed up my project I felt happy with the amount of work that I had put into my website/interactive game story. For my usability tests, I tried to ask people that would give me the straightest answers, so I went randomly around the floors of my dorm in order to see how people reacted to my game. I got generally good feedback from most of the people that took my usability test. But looking back at my project after hearing what people had to say about it I definitely would like to change some things that had been brought to my attention. I started off asking people how they liked the overall look and feel of the website rather than the actual content inside.
A lot of the responses said the layout was simple and easy to look at which I was pleased to hear. I went for a simpler layout without too much going on in the background so that my main iFrame would attract the user attention right away and that they would play the story. I did, however, have a few complaints on that they didn’t know what they were diving into until I had to give them a synopsis of what my website was about. People thought that it might be a good idea to on the outer page, which is the main website, give a quick bio or general information text box about the game and what exactly the user is about to experience. I thought that this might be a good way to allow the user to invest themselves in the story before just going into something blindly. Overall, the colors seemed to mesh well together and the icon I made was fitting to the website.
The next topic of discussion in the usability test was the actual content in which the users were going through. I got a lot of compliments on the artwork of the game. Although it was not all mine I feel that I did a pretty good job of making the characters and scenes fun and enjoyable to look at. I did, however, get a few comments on how some of the pictures looked out of place, for example the sunflower character that I used did not really mesh well with some of the pixelated backgrounds that I used. The navigation of the site was said to be very easy and that most of the buttons (which I used rollovers) were easy to find and easily known that they were a button. I did have some exceptions where on some of the dark scenes, buttons were hard to find or the user had to do a little scrubbing to find the rollovers. If I were to go back and change things to my project, I would make sure the buttons were different colors than the other fonts and texts in my story so that they contrasted and resembled buttons more. There were compliments on the music that I chose saying it peaked interest on the users to keep going give it a mysterious feel and vibe. Finally the overall story, I was told was a bit too short for the liking of my audience, which in way is kind of a good thing. It means that they were looking for something more of the story, or they wanted more than what I gave them. There needed to be more explanations on certain events that happened in my story, for example after you find the bats favorite food, what happens in the exchange? These are all things that I would want to go back and add to the story. Another complaint that also appeared pretty constantly was that there were not many choices in my interactive story that would actually take you multiple paths. It was more of if you did something you went to a losing screen and you could just try again. Looking at it now I would want to make more options for the user the cross between paths of the stories and possibly give them more options. This, I think, would keep the user more interested in the story and with what they were playing with.
In the end, I see now that having people play through your games is a great way to develop new ideas for your projects. When I finished my website I thought physically, maybe because I was exhausted, that I could not do anything more to make it better. Now that I have gone through this process I feel that I have a completely whole other project that I need to be working on, but in reality its just fixing up and adding to the one that I have already.
Usability Test: Flower Power
Url: http://mywebspace.quinnipiac.edu/clwinders/250/midterm/index.html
By Colin Winders
1. What were your overall thoughts when first looking at the website? Were you confused here to go?
2. Do you like the layout of the website? Was it easy to navigate through?
3. How did you like the artwork of the story? Did it make it better or worse? Why?
4. Did the music help the mood of the story or was it just annoying?
5. Did you want more of the story after you went through it? Was there not enough story for your liking?
6. What about the story did you like? What did you dislike? What are suggestions on improvements that could made in the future?