Preparation for Final Presentation

In preparation for our final presentation, we began exploring our final scenario of use and how we wanted to showcase goPlay. We decided on a Flash presentation, and began looking for actors to walk through their goPlay experiences. After many hours of recording, our actors provided a lot of enthusiasm for goPlay, and we had a lot of work ahead of us to pull together our goPlay demo. We also wanted to explore platforms for using the service during the demo. We showed three different individuals each with their individual reasons for using goPlay, looking to play ultimate Frisbee. They each used a different access method for the service: mobile communication, desktop, and a Web TV interface. From here it was a lot of refinement for the final presentation in order to explain our process and our solution.

Evaluative Phase

After our paper prototyping we reevaluated each of the screens we had created and made a lot of changes throughout the process of using the system. We created higher-fidelity mockups of the screens for the presentation of our work during the evaluative phase. We explained our concepts further through a scenario about Stef and her first time setting up her account and joining a game, by using the goPlay system. We received a lot of great feedback about how to enable a richer experience, not just for people who are mobile. We were encouraged to design our service for a desktop as well. Additionally, we were encouraged to think more about other token devices, like the bracelet. In our earlier ideation process, we had been thinking about a ‘family of objects,’ so this is an area that we plan to explore at a greater depth.

Paper Prototyping & Think Aloud

After presenting our first scenario of use at the end of the generative phase, we began creating mockups of screens for our service. We went through several iterations initially, and then we wanted to get feedback from users about the setup process, how they would create a game, and how they would join a game. We had users think-aloud during the paper prototyping session, and we got a lot of feedback.

For the setup process we learned that it is important for users to be able to specify preferences about who they would like to play with for each individual activity. For example, people may be more competitive for tennis but only want to play ultimate Frisbee for fun. When we asked people to pick their activities, many went through the list and saw activities that they have never played before but were curious in trying them out. We found this very interesting that our service had the potential to help introduce people new activities that they otherwise wouldn’t think of trying. We also received good feedback about the ability to specify preferences for who you want to play with, either people were very particular about this, or they would play with anyone.

For creating or joining a game, we found how people wanted to explore the interactive map and how we could better display recommendations. The ability to see how active a person has been, and what sports they have played was ‘cool’ and informative. We also found language that needed to be clarified, places where we could have optional screens, and where the system needed to be more flexible for user’s needs. Overall, the sessions helped us better frame how we should approach the screen limitations of designing for a communication device.