For my final project, I focused on user testing. At that stage, my original Arduino circuit was not working properly, and the joystick I had first planned to use also did not work as intended. Because of that, I carried out the user testing using the fighting stick controller together with p5 through the Gamepad API. This meant that the testing phase focused mainly on the p5 interaction and the overall mapping of the controls, instead of the final Arduino-to-p5 system I had originally planned.
Even though I still wanted the final version of the project to include an Arduino component, the fighting stick allowed me to continue testing the interaction design and visual system instead of stopping the project completely. The main goal of the testing was to see whether users could understand how the controls changed the rug composition, whether the mapping felt clear, and whether the overall experience felt exploratory and engaging without needing much explanation.
Overall, the p5 side of the project was working well during testing. My sister was able to press different controls and see clear visual changes in the textile composition. She could tell that different controls were changing things like the motif, palette, and other visual properties. The strongest part of the interaction was that the visual response happened immediately, so she understood that her input was directly affecting the rug design.
The main issue was not with the visual response itself, but with the text at the bottom of the screen. I had included button hints there to explain which control was mapped to what action, but that part was not working clearly enough. Because of that, my sister had to guess which button did what before she fully understood the system. Once she started experimenting, she was able to figure it out, but the labels and hint text were not as clear or reliable as they should have been for a first-time user.
This testing helped me understand that the p5 interaction and visual system were already strong enough to support the project, since my sister could still explore and generate designs successfully. It also showed me clearly which part needed more work, which was fixing the control mapping and the guidance text on screen. After the testing, I continued developing the project by fixing the interaction and working on a version that included Arduino, since the fighting stick was helpful as a temporary workaround for testing, but it was not the final interaction system I wanted for the project.
References:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad_API/Using_the_Gamepad_API