The second week began with the team talking to ETC Professor Heather Kelley to gain insight on how to conduct early user research with our demographic which will be people with disabilities. She helped us understand the importance of making an accessible experience and appropriate theming. The team was referred to the book “Nothing about us, without us” by James Charlton.
She informed us of similar past ETC projects and outside organizations that build research-based rehabilitation games. With her guidance, we were able to reach out to a few subject experts to begin our early research to gather first-hand information. She identified questions we should answer to build an effective experience.
We built the prototypes for the 5 game ideas. All prototypes used the Tobii eye tracker and only had a click interaction. Our presentation for the ideas can be found here
The team created a requirement matrix to measure each idea in terms of our client’s requirements.
These 5 ideas had various elements which introduced their own risk, impact, and effort. We each rated these ideas based on the effort impact and risk and put them into a chart. (E/I/R chart)
Effort: How much work would be needed. 5 means a lot of work. 1 means minimal
Impact: Does it do what we need it to do and does it align with the requirements? 5 means very much so. 1 means not at all
Risk: Are there a lot of unknowns? 5 would be mean a completely undefined space. 1 would mean we knew the world from start to finish.
Our clients preferred the mechanics for bull, pilot, and telekinesis and wanted us to continue exploring them further for the next few weeks before designing the gameplay for the final game. These mechanics were entertaining.
Their simplicity gives room for levels that could progressively train guests with the equipment.
The week ended with the team discussing the feedback received from the client and how we can further develop those 3 prototypes.
We also started preparing for the 1/4s presentation where all the ETC faculty visit the projects teams and give feedback on their process and initial findings.