Hard Working v.s. Smart Working

Before, I always think, [Try your best] = [Hard working]
From past personal working experience till the team project experience, I always put all the effots, but also wondering why the results were not so efficient than I expected.

Today, I understood, "smart working" is more accurate answer for myself and the attitude to do things in the future.

Project Milestones

First Week

• Mon. 14th Jan.: Deconstruction text, brainstorming ideas, roles decided
• Tue. 15th Jan.: concept decided, tutorial with Sandra
• Wed. 16th Jan.: disccusion of Paper prototype , storyboarding, PP test plan
• Thr. 17th Jan: modification of paper prototype, tutorial with Mazy, PP test plan
• Fri. 18th Jan: PP testing, video Location deciding, video shooting preparation, first mock-up of interface
• Sat. 19th Jan: video shooting preparation
• Sun. 20th Jan: video shooting

Second week

• Mon. 21th Jan.: vedio exporting, editing, coding software solution finding
• Tue. 22th Jan.: intro video editing, sound editing, interface designing, coding
• Wed. 23th Jan.: timelines' video editing, masking, sound editing, interface designing, coding
• Thr. 24th Jan.: tutorial with Mazy, timelines' video editing, masking, sound editing, interface designing, coding
• Fri. 25th Jan.: Usability test preparation, timelines' video finished, interface designing, coding
• Sat. 26th Jan.: coding, usability test preparation
• Sun. 27th Jan.: usability test, discussion of modification and presentation points, presentation website

Third week

• Mon. 28th Jan.: Presentation and Crit
• Team C blog: http://0708maimmintnarc.blogspot.com/

Presentation and crit

After presentation finished, we got valuable points to think our product.

• overall, the VURPs' can grasp our concept and the story
• high interactivity, but also loose the plot control
• we didn't go deeper the ambiguity
• VURPs' can't interact deeper into our product
• the technical problems influence the result, it hard to judge the level of VURPs' motivation
• is Flash a good tool for this project?

need debugging and modification

• From the testing, we found:
  1. The visibility of Instruction button. Only one user clicked the instruction button for help.
  2. The dark scroll problem. 2 Users can not wait the murder video finished, and tried to click the dark scrolls at the beginning.

3. There is no navigation to back to intro or the beginning of murder video. If user can not understand the story at first time, they have no chance to watch the video again.

4. Technical problems influenced the result. Interesting to find, 3 of them all started form the right slider “Pallas”. However, owing to the technical problems, each timeline video delayed to responded and very slow. Once they can not find the difference on screen, they loose patient to wait and started to try other scrolls, consequently, felt confused the characters.

5. The scroll control not functioned well. 4 Users clicked the arrows or the scrolls as a button. Only 1 user use mouse and control it well. 1 user clicked the screen directly tried to drag and move characters.Issue 6.: Users felt confused about the characters. The classification of each character was not clear enough from long-shot video.

• Modification required:

1. Make Instruction button more visible by size and position. Move the position to the right-bottom corner. Most users started the right-bottom slider, when they got stuck, it’s the most visible position.

2. Remove the dark scrolls at the beginning to avoid distraction. Users will finish watching the murder story without distraction, and then start to play with the movie.

3. Add button of “back to intro” and “back to the beginning” allowing user the chance to navigate anytime.

4. Reassure technical modification on coding and all the possible ending combination of videos can go smoothly.

5. Make the double arrow clickable as a functional button. Users can click both the scrolls and the double arrow icons to make a better control.

6. Clarify the characters in video and in scrolls by different colors, make remarkable connection with scrolls. Considering the video can not be shot again, use After Effects editing software to clarify characters in video. Meantime, put photos on sliders and use flash effects and color coding the scrolls.

Usability test

• I suggested to have test in my flat because it's a student accommendation, even on Sunday, we can find target audience to test.


• due to the purpose and methadology is different from PP test, we revised Questionnaire


• Test process and Participants:
  This time, all the team joined the test. Michele was responsible for moderator, taking notes and filming. I tried to find target audience for testing. The others for observers from long distance to avoid too much disturbance. In total 5 participants were tested ranging from ages 18 – 28, all studying at University of the Arts, London. Each user considered themselves keen readers and only one seemed to enjoy both reading and gaming. First, the interface played the intro video. After this, the screen displayed the murder video to give them a story background (the scrolls were in dark color which means users can not move them at that time). Then, 4 scrolls appeared brightly on the screen, we observed their response; meantime, the moderator kept on asking them questions.
• due to the time is rush, the interface has some technicle problems and bugs
• for ex.: the scrolls will disapear, users can't find where to interact ; the sliders not working