Appraisal

This week I focused on the appraisal and reflections. In the contact session, my teammate and I watched all the prototype videos and reports we need to critique together, and we shared our opinion and we discussed the confusing part of each prototype, In the meantime, we uploaded our suggestions and questions in a google drive file. Googledrivelink

Refulections:

I received three appraisals from classmates:

1.

Hi, Sulamain:

The starting point of your concept is very good, which is to design a game to help players develop programming thinking.

By watching your video we are happy to have some feedback for you.

1. For the code on the front of the block, we are more confused about the setting of the complex instructions in the loop statement. If a player does not have any programming foundation, then he is likely to feel confused about what these codes mean and how should I use them. Therefore, you can consider a detailed explanation of all game devices and settings before the game starts so that players can fully understand the game running and operating rules.
2. Regarding the tasks to be completed by the robot, we would like to know whether the design of this maze game is based on the results of user research. Because through your documentation, we learned that in the process of confirming the way of this game, you just brainstormed with Bowen, so we can't understand whether this decision is based on user research. In addition, regarding the game mission, we know that there are different game difficulties in your description, but it seems that this part is not reflected in your video. Does the difficulty of the game depend on the length of the maze path? Or is it set by other methods?
3. For the input of the block, we have a question, is there any basis for determining the meaning of each letter on the block? For example, why does the letter "W" represent the front rather than the letter "F"? We hope to see more of this part of the design basis to understand the design principles behind.

In short, very good work, but some details still need to be considered, we are looking forward to your final prototype!

• Team Hedgehog

2.

Hi Sulaiman! Our team really enjoyed the concept of using building blocks to represent code as it represents the metaphor of “building” code. The method of interacting with the concept is definitely novel and interesting so great job on that!

While reviewing your video, we had some questions regarding the usability of the concept, as there are only a limited number of blocks, how would the full implementation of the concept look like? Will there be too many or not enough blocks for the user to progress in their programming abilities? Maybe it would be valuable to look into having multiple sides represent multiple keywords. We also noticed how the user would have to individually scan each block, we would suggest having an implementation where all the blocks are able to be scanned at once.

While having a robot visually represents the code is a very effective way to engage with users, I’m curious to see how will this be progressively harder to “code” by the user as moving/changing direction is considered to be relatively simple code. Lastly, the context of use wasn't too clear, in regards to the number of components to the concept, we would suggest that your concept be applied in a school setting, with relevant research into who will use this concept and what differs it from traditional online methods (eg using GUI to learn code). All in all, I really like the idea of blocks and a great job with your prototype!

• Team Garfunkel

3.

We really like the way you are creatively using tracking and the sensors to capture what the user has selected. However, we were wondering about the usability of the letters chosen for the blocks. We were confused by what “W” stands for and whether users will wonder the same. It might be worth double checking the contrasts of the letters as well, as we found it difficult to read. Another thing we noticed is that once the block lines get longer, it gets more and more time consuming for the user to scan each and every block, and perhaps you want to explore ways of scanning the whole line at once? How about having a portable scanner that can be rolled along the blocks? Some user tests to explore their experience with the blocks and the concept might be good to make sure they understand what they are doing and what they are doing it for. For both you and Bowen we would have liked to see more about the user experience in the user journey, not just how it works. It’s good to see that you have background and user research to back up your design choices!

• Team Supparoo

After reflecting on these appraisals, these are my responds for the team appraisals:

1.Team Hedgehog

Since team Hedgehog mentioned that they think that the code may confuse the people without programming knowledge, so I plan to consider adding an explanation or a tutorial for the system. Besides, they did not feel that the difficulty is different, so I plan to create more tasks and let the user test it and rate for the difficulty for each task, then I will set the order of the task, make it a difficulty-increasing game. Additionally, for the simple code put on blocks, they felt that the code put on it does not have any design principles to support that. So, I plan to dom some research to find some design principles to perfect the current code to make it more understandable for users.

2.Team Garfunkel

Team Garfunkel confused about our blocks setting, they suggest that to put the code on different sides of the blocks, it will reduce the number of blocks in all. To achieve that I can make the Qr code smaller and put it with the simple code together on one side of the block, it is accessible, but the problem is that the QR code on different sides may disturb each other, and make it hard to recognize. So I will do a test to see whether it can work well or not. Besides, they suggest that the concept can be used in a school setting since our target audience before is all the novice of programming, so I may consider the suggestion and do some user testing to find the best context for that.

3.Team Supparoo,

From the team, they suggest we find a better way to scan the blocks. Since currently, this is the only way I found that can achieve the goals, so maybe I will explore more ways to see whether I can find a better solution. And I will pay more attention to describe the user journey in the next report.