{"id":310,"date":"2013-04-12T00:11:03","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T00:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/?p=310"},"modified":"2013-04-16T00:16:01","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T00:16:01","slug":"week-11-good-news-bad-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/?p=310","title":{"rendered":"Week 11: Good News, Bad News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Week in Review<\/h1>\n

For our client and our team, this week started\u00a0with good news and ended with a bit of bad\u00a0news.<\/p>\n

We began with a Sunday playtest at the Carnegie\u00a0Science Center. In the same corner of the museum where we did our first paper playtest\u00a0eight weeks ago, we brought a mock up of our\u00a0kiosk for the first ever full playtest with kids.\u00a0The test could not have been more successful:\u00a0kids enjoyed themselves and spent more\u00a0than ten minutes in the experience; they found\u00a0the experience easy to use and understood\u00a0what they were doing; they worked with their\u00a0siblings, friends, or parents to tell stories; they\u00a0formed a line for the playtest and waited patiently\u00a0for their turn. All of this gave our client,\u00a0who visited just for the playtest, confidence in\u00a0our work and alleviated one of their potentially\u00a0problematic concerns, that kids would not\u00a0know which of the two screens to look at.<\/p>\n

We returned to our office with a long list of\u00a0relatively minor changes we needed to make
\nand content we needed to add. We needed to\u00a0slow down text speeds, improve animations,\u00a0add audio, and shift all of our art assets to a\u00a0new resolution in preparation for a switch from\u00a0our test hardware to the actual hardware we\u00a0would be using. While each task was relatively\u00a0minor, together they added up to more hours\u00a0than we had. As we looked at two weeks that
\nremained before halves, it seemed we would\u00a0have to trim features.<\/p>\n

The first feature we looked at was an email the story home feature, which the client haddiscussed early on and which the faculty had advised against during Halves. We knew it wasimportant to the client, but we also knew the feature would be difficult, and potentially build breaking, to implement. We spent a few days talking\u2014to each other, to the clients, and to the faculty\u2014to see if there was any way of reaching the clients\u2019 goal of giving kids some digital takeaway. Ultimately, we determined that given the length of time left in the semester\u2014we could not insure we would be able to deliver a working e-mail feature that wouldn\u2019t jeopardize the overall, robust experience we had created.<\/p>\n

On Friday, we delivered the news to our client.\u00a0We acknowledged that we had been overly ambitious\u00a0in suggesting that this was a feature we\u00a0might be able to achieve. While we had achieved\u00a0a great deal in less than six weeks of production\u00a0and met many of our and their project goals, this\u00a0was something we just couldn\u2019t do. The best we\u00a0could offer was to leave a part of the system\u00a0open for this feature. This way, if the client finds\u00a0they really need this feature, they could add it\u00a0when they do a second iteration of the exhibit.<\/p>\n

We Suggest<\/h1>\n