Week 9

Development

The development this week was mainly focused on minor fixes to parts of the project that had been consistently distracting to playtesters and external users. This way, we could ensure our upcoming mock session playtests could go smoother. A major feature we added was a waiting room that the user would start in before going to the main room. This would give time for everyone to join the app and connect to each other, a non-distracting space to enter a personalized username, and simulate the process of going to an in-person therapy appointment.

Design of the UI continued as before, with some paper playtests for layout and updates based on features we considered adding/dropping. 

For sound in the project, a classmate from another team volunteered to help us, and provided us with the first sounds to add this week: some ambient nature sounds and picking up/putting down the brushes.

Playtesting 

The previous week we had scheduled a “practice” mock session playtest, where one or two team members would be participants, but were unable to make it happen. We scheduled that to happen this week instead, and it gave us some valuable insights on some of the smaller details of the type of art therapy our collaborators conduct. One key point was the fact that there would be discussion and new directives interspersed between periods of art making. On our therapist collaborators’ side, they also got a feel for how to observe and interact in that context. For example, while standing at the back of the room behind the participant gave them a good view of the art, it was annoying for the participant to have to turn around to make eye contact while talking.

We also had our first “real” mock session playtest, with two of our ETC classmates serving as participants. There was a lot of logistical struggle with setting up the audio, since we were using a mix of Zoom and the Oculus party feature to avoid echo from the two participants being in the same room. We got about 15 minutes in eventually, and took away some lessons on how to run these hybrid VR playtests more smoothly.