Båige: Horse Race!
I conducted user testing twice with different people before improving the project and after improving it. Both of the times, I gave the users the game without explaining it, but they had a chance to read the short instructions on the game itself.
Before improving the project: The game didn’t have the physical decoration as the box with the lines, but the small push buttons on the Arduino. Overall, the game experience was good and the people asked to play again and again. Yet, there were several issues. First, because of the absence of the physical implementation of the lines with the decoration, it was hard for the users to immediately understand what each of the buttons does and is responsible for. As it is shown in video 1, small buttons have nothing except the colors, giving a hint that they are responsible for the position of each of the lines. Because of this, they had to play around with buttons and figure it out by themselves. As soon as they figured it out, it was much easier and more interesting to play. Second, sometimes when the users clash with the obstacles, it happens so fast that the users might not understand where it happened. Hence, it seems like the game finished out of nowhere. Third, in terms of user experience, it was a bit inconvenient for the users to always press the button “Enter” to start and restart the game.
First video: before improving
After improving the project: All three points mentioned above were improved and implemented. First, the physical box with four colored lines with buttons of the same color on top of them and the decorations were added. Because of this, the users were able to figure out the functionality of the push buttons quickly. Second, the sleep function was added, so when the user clashes with the obstacle, the picture freezes for a second, showing the clash. In this case, no matter how fast was the clash, the user will be able to see that. Third, I added one more button responsible for starting and restarting the game, so the user doesn’t have to touch something outside of the buttons. After improving these things, the overall experience of playing the game was much better. Yet, there were times when the user didn’t hit the snake, but the game was over. This happened because the distance of collision was a bit more than the image, so I had to decrease that.
Second video: after improving