An activity that we performed today in order to present and provide feedback to the many ideas in the class involved the old Six Thinking Hats strategy. Basically, we were given six different coloured hats, or rather cones, of the colours blue, red, white, black, yellow and green. Each hat represented a form of thinking i.e. objective, process, intuitive, creativity, negativity and positivity. By visiting different groups in the contact and being presented with their idea, we were to give feedback based on a different colour hat. This technique, though somewhat tedious, proved effective as it gave us the chance to come up with different responses in a planned and smart order.
Our three ideas that were chosen:
1. Animal Growls - concept by Soobin: A game where users are faced with a variety of sounds from animals (i.e. elephant, bird, frog etc), before users are then asked where the animal lives (i.e. mountain, sea, safari etc). If the user gets the answer correct from the list of provided images, the user will then be faced with three imaged options of that the animal is. This whole process is one round, while progressing through the game, the game will get harder by adding in a time limit.
2. What's That Sound - concept by China: Similar to Soobin's concept. The computer will play various types of sounds (i.e. thunder, dog barking, car racing etc) and users are given three options (not images, but words) to what the sound could be. Each time the user guesses, there will be a time limit that will gradually get shorter as the user advances through the levels. If the user gets three wrong answers, the game is over.
3. Guess The Location - concept by myself: The computer will play different sounds that one would hear from a certain location (i.e. school bell, talking and papers ruffling for school, waves, sun shining, volleyball for beach etc) and users will need to guess the location that the computer has chosen. As the user progresses on to the more difficult levels, less sound tracks will be played from harder to guess locations, such as only playing the sound of water splashing, a whistle and heavy breathing for a swimming lesson.
Left sheet: Animal Growls by Soobin
Top right: Guess The Location by Lien
Bottom right: What's That Sound by China
Basically what we had to do during class was agree on two members in a team to stay at the table to introduce our concepts to two members of other teams (who will be providing feedback on our concepts), while our other two members visited other teams to give feedback for their concepts. Since one member in our team was away, Soobin volunteered to be the member who would go off doing the tasks himself. The first stage saw China and I staying back to explain our concept to others while Soobin left to visit other teams. After this, China and I went to visit other groups while Soobin stayed back to explain our concepts to visiting team members.
Feedback from the session that China and I led:
- first thought the ideas were very interesting as it used audio tracks instead of other media (red)
- liked that the games are a simple and easy to understand procedure for children (our main audience) (yellow)
- for Animal Growls, there can be too many similar sounds - like there are many types of different bird sounds and this can confuse users (black)
- when asked how to solved the issue, said this could actually be a good thing as the harder or more complicated sounds could be used for harder levels (green)
- mentioned if there will there be a reward for completing each game
- for Guess The Location, the technique of making the levels harder is effective
- Both users favourited Guess The Location
Feedback from the session that Soobin led:
- asked how the sounds would be referenced - meaning, is it possible to actually attain the audio tracks from Trove?
- all ideas were 'pretty fun' (red)
- Animal Growls seems a little complicated (black)
- Whats That Sound seems the best presented (yellow)
- For Whats That Sound, a bit too easy - most users will know the difference between the sound of thunder and a dog barking (black)
- For Animal Growls, cut it down to be more easy (green)
- For Guess The Location, lacks difficulty (black)
- Suggests different concepts as they are all based on sound
- Both users suggest merging Animal Growls and What's That Sound - the merge to be both of their favourites
I'm not sure what Soobin encountered while he went off to visit other groups, however he did mention that half the time was spent discussing how the hats worked, some thought they had to take the hats back to their groups, some thought the hats had to be placed on the concept that applied to its colour most etc. Anyway, what China and I discovered when visiting other groups was that they did not have a main concept that all their concepts were based around. The group we came to had three completely different ideas using three completely different contents from Trove.
Moving on, if you've actually read this whole day's post so far - firstly, wow, i am impressed since this is so boring. Really, im touched. Secondly, if you remember me saying in the very second line that we did so much today but everything came to a waste, well it all started an hour before the class ended. Our group was naturally happy and felt on top of things since we were given so much useful feedback and felt that we had everything under control. We even arranged our deadline for choosing our final idea by tomorrow night (so we had time to explain to Bill everything from today's contact as well as hear his opinions). Anyway, we were having a pretty good time until Lorna came over in the last ten minutes and asked us on our ideas. She then asked us if we could actually use Trove's audio tracks. Well duh, we're not that unprepared, of course we could. Hahaaaaaaa no, no we actually can't. It turns out we need to sign up for something of which i forgot the name in order to use Trove's audio content. And well what do you know, all our ideas use Trove's sound files. So we had two options:
1. Change our idea completely and not use sound and be boring little people like everyone else and use normal Trove content or
2. Choose one of our ideas that uses images and other information that can be obtained from Trove (such as Animal Growl's images of animals, their habitat as well as geographic info on where they live). Use all these contents from Trove and obtain the audio tracks from somewhere else.
Since Lorna gave us her opinions and everything and left as soon at it was time to leave the class, we literally spent another two minutes frantically searching up any websites which offered free sound tracks for the public to use (in case we went with option 2 of using sound effects from somewhere besides Trove). This was successful. We found quite a few. So now all we have to do is report everything in today's class to Bill and decide very carefully on our final concept.. and start the pitch and poster and documentation by next Thursday. Oh so fun. Anyway, I think today's post has gotten a little lengthy so i shall now rest your innocent eyes and stop writing.
One last thing, Six Thinking Hats image sourced from: debonoforschools.com/asp/six_hats.asp
No comments:
Post a Comment