A breif walkthroguht the scenes of my interactive experience.

For my MVP, one of the main things that I decided to test out is a scene which serves as an introductory environment to all of the other scenes. I found this to be one of the most successful incorporations that I have done in my project so far. Based on some of the feedback, I realized that this introductory scene grounded well the idea that I want to communicate to the user. By having an introductory scene with certain objects that allow the user to teleport into the historical period that the tools represent—allowed the user to better understand what they are dealing with. The positive aspects of the experience was that the users better understood their relation to the experience which helped them to orient them to the historical context in which I want to ground the narrative/experience.

As of now, the user interaction commences in a house that resembles a house belonging to a hermit who lives in the woods. Inside the house, there is a desk and a couple drawers filled with books. On of the the tables however, there is a something unusual: three objects floating in mid-air that seem to welcome the user to interact with them. When the user interacts with one of the objects, they are immediately transposed into the environment that is relevant to the object. What this environment is, is a scene from a specific historic period that attempts to exemplify that specific tool shapes the reality in the context it is applied.

Feedback

One of the most general themes that I got from the interactions was that I had to work on the following things:

  • Improve the interaction in my environment
  • Some of the interiors where hard to navigate causing the player to get stuck.
  • It was suggested that I should use one single terrain and then allow the user to notice how it changes over time. That way the user will realize that the scenes are more related to one another. This particular suggestion was brought up when one of the users realized that the same model of a house was used in multiple scenes, so exemplifying the relationship between similar objects between the different scenes might actually serve the project’s intent: to tie different historic periods and the contexts in which tools are used.
  • Create a goal driven navigation system so that the users would be able to navigate the environment. Placing the user in a environment that provides little hints regarding how the user must navigate and where to go, may curtail the user experience. This however may also be part of the point above.

First 5 Week Assessment

  1. I feel I’m making progress in:
    • User experience: I received a good amount of feedback that informed the way I structured the way the user interaction plays out in my environment.
    • Thinking about the end user and how they are able to interact with my world and conceptual theme.
    • How certain details in my world might or might not help my concept.
  2. I feel I need assistance with:
    • Programing Unity particularly regarding tips on creating interactions.
    • Some minor guidance on how to incorporate VR into my experience.
  3. The first five weeks I discovered/learned how people interact with my project and generally have conceived how other people generally look and interact with it.
  4. Comments on the studio?
    • The activities that have been employed in the studio help, to certain extents, look at how people interact with my project, and how to better articulate the intentions of my project to other people. Articulating my project’s intent in a succinct and concise sentence. The activities that were based around this goal (of concisely conveying my intentions), helped me to narrow down on what I really want to get done and by what means.