Week 12: a reprieve from the governor in the sky. Fortunately and unfortunately this week we were struck down by bad weather that postponed the scheduled Pilot Sk.8 event.
(https.//media.giphy.com/media/3osxYzIQRqN4DOEddC/giphy.gif)
The good news, however, was additional time to develop Skating Sonified including additional user testing. First, though, we were incredibly excited to bring Skating Sonified to its new home – well its new housing.
This was a real turning point in Skating Sonified; until this late last week, we had been using a very low fidelity casing solution- just a cardboard container holding our components. This week we upgraded in a BIG way. This 3D printed shell/case not only made the Skating Sonified project look and feel more professional, it easily and securely held all components, including the newest one: a NeoPixel Ring.
(Source: https.//www.ebay.com.au/i/153241548696?chn=ps).
The NeoPixel Ring is connected to a LilyPad Arduino, a microphone and is powered by a 3xAAA battery pack. The microphone ‘listens’ to the speaker and pulses the lights on the Ring according to the volume. This allowed is to evolve Skating Sonified from the left to the right.
With this done we were able to move into user testing at a much higher level of fidelity.
We conducted testing on 3x experts (other masters students) who were told how the Skating Sonifiied experience worked and tasked with ‘playing’ with the system. After a minute or two of undirected play, the experimenters (the Sk8er Bois) recommended actions to try- jumping up and down, spinning, running between two points etc.
Once testers had spent approximately 5-minutes wearing the Skating Sonified Pack, they were interviewed and asked to fill out a short questionnaire. The feedback was both encouraging and enlightening. First the clear responses :
– 100% of participants described the experience as “fun”
– 100% of participants found it halfway between predictable and unpredictable
– 100% of participants found the device mostly largely comfortable
Second the mixed responses:
– 66% described the device as unobtrusive or more unobtrusive, 33% described the device as more intrusive
– 66% described the experience as more connecting than isolating, and 33% described the experience as more isolating than connecting
Then we moved one to 7 pre-selected interview questions:
Question 1. How would you describe your experience using Skating Sonified?
Question 2. Name something you liked about your experience?
Question 3. Name something you DIDN’T like about your experience
Question 4. Did you understand what movements controlled the sound output?
Question 5. Did you feel like you were in control?
Question 6. Did you enjoy the sounds you were creating?
Question 7. How would you improve the Skating Sonified experience?
Between the questionnaire and the interview, we were left with 2 key pieces of actionable feedback. Firstly, that the Skating Sonified experience was not predictable enough; testers were excited to move, jump run and play with Skating Sonified, but what they were finding was a lack of reliability in response. In short, users were finding that a jump didn’t always sound like a jump.
Additionally, throughout all testing we found the same issues discovered by Louie: the system was not sensitive enough to be truly utilised by people on foot. We would need to work on both elements before the Pilot Sk.8 event.
Playful Cities 