Alpha Test with Level 4 Juniors

Today, I am glad to have Level 4 Juniors to give feedbacks on my final project. As their feedbacks are the most pure and accurate response on this project. I haven't managed to show all chapters(total 3) to them because I was spending most of the time on debugging the technical part in chapter 1 and 2. But I was surprised that most of the testers understand my story without the final chapters when I got the alpha test feedback forms.

The alpha test took around 2-3 hours. A total of 14 testers had tested on my project. I showed my artwork through my laptop. I left my tester to explore the narrative themselves without explaining the overall story and stood behind to observe them.

I have noted down the tester's behavior which I have summarized it below with screen captured images and what I should improve on it. ( I only picked the major issues to refine)

On the landing page, most of the testers have clicked the scrolls to enter the story. However, only one of them clicked the title to start. In this part, I will put some growing effects and animation on the scrolls to attract users to click on it at the first time.

There was some mistake on the instruction, it ran off the page, therefore some of the tester found the instruction too small and out of position. In this part, I will enlarge the instruction or make it "scroll up or down" text bigger. 

When stories continue to the next page, there was lack of "mouse scroll" instruction. I found it should be consistent place in each of the panels that required mouse scroll for the user. 

The next button might appear too far away from the panel.

This is some other important issue and mistakes on the first panel in the Kabuki hall. I should remove the fade in effects because it confused user and they actually waiting some effects will appear.

Minor issues: the Kabuki dancer disappears after running the whole animation.

Another issue that, most of the testers clicks on the hand button first instead of clicking the umbrella. The idea is to show the umbrella is clickable so the umbrella rollover to make the Kabuki dancer fall down, but the hand button appears too obvious. In this part, I will remove the hand button and maintain the growing effects.

Some of the issues such as the font size are a bit too small, the length of the storyline is too long. I will enlarge the font size a little bit bigger and find a copywriter to help me to correct the sentences.

I am very satisfied because the over performance rate of this project from the testers was very good. Their feedbacks were very helpful. Most of them understand the narrative of the website and they are enjoying of sabotage people's dream. 

The next execution is to refine the issues that noted in above and continue working on the final chapter. 

Alpha test preparation questions

I have prepared 9 important alpha test questions for the coming Tuesday. Our juniors, the level 4 students will be coming in to test on our project, so that I prepare a simple and straight forwards question for them to fill in. 

External Guest Feedbacks - Benedict Tan

Another special guest, Benedict Tan visited us on today. Today I managed to show him the first chapter and second chapter with full interaction. He was surprised on my project because he has never seen this before. He suggested the chapters of my story should have some interesting transitions to let users know they are entering into the dream. His other comment is to put more dreamy effects into the edge of the panels to represent dream. I have asked him whether the fonts are readable and should it be a problem, his comments are the font size are fine but should reduce the word length.

My execution after this is to prepare the alpha test questions and refined some of the scenes in chapter 1 and chapter 2. I found out my story lack of instruction as it is very important for user testing. I will continue figuring out the problems of displaying my project with Google Chrome browser which the big issue that currently I am worried. I will reflect on what Benedict suggestions if I have the extra time to allow me to change.

External Guest Feedback - Stuart Godwin

Today, our class has a special guest from the industry to give reviews on our final project.  It was my pleasure to have Stuart Godwin from Cheil Malaysia to give feedbacks on my final year project.

As promised, I have shown one chapter with full interaction to the special guest. As I am very behind from my Gantt chart schedule so I have explained a rough story to Stuart. He was quite confused on my story at the beginning, but he was amazed by the graphics and the interaction. He said I was doing a good job of exploring new software such as Adobe Edge. He suggested I should fully utilize the technology, it would be more interesting to merge up the graphics together and form nicely transtition instead of putting them into one static panel. He has nothing more comments, but the font size in the story is too small to read. Other than that, he has highlighted the social elements in this project. I have explained that my website will display through website, social share buttons such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus would put after the final chapter to let user to share this project of social media so that this project has gained more exposure.

I am glad to have this positive feedbacks and suggestion from Stuart. It keeps motivated to continue working on this project. Therefore, what should I do from today and the coming two weeks study break, to adjust the font size in my story, to try my best to complete all the graphics and coding so that I am able to show my full narrative to the next special guest and get ready for my alpha test.

Prospectus Feedback

I had received my prospectus feedback from Sweii. I realized the rational and the intend of my final year project is not clear enough. Therefore, I have do some review about the overall project to make sure everything is strong and clear. 

The starting idea of this project is more relevant to personal experience. As a friend around me who has lost her loves one and always having nightmare. One of the issues that cause nightmare is she always having negative thought. However, we might get nightmare from other causes as well such as sleep disorder, stress and so on. While from this "nightmare" perspective, I have done a lot of research until I found Baku which is a mythology creature from Japanese folklore. Baku having dream-eating abilities and people believe that it is a mascot that they place it in their house to against nightmare. I found Baku is a very interesting creature that only happens in our dream that it will protect us in our belief. Therefore, from this mythology creature  and the story of my friend that have inspired and helped me to expand on building a fantasy story.

An article by San noted, "If you are prone to having nightmares, the cause is always the presence of several “strong” fear-based vibrations in you that have not been released from your energy space. A nightmare is an indication of a strong negative vibration, as compared to a “bad dream” which is relatively less intense."

In Japanese folklore, Baku is against to nightmare, it helps people to eat up all the bad dreams but in my Baku's story, I have implemented my friend's story and  made a twist character as this Baku character who became depressed after his master death and got bullied by others. He became very depressed and angry at the same time and from that his personality has change to bad. He started to build out nightmare to the others and he found himself very enjoying doing it. 

In the research in Pindariherbfarm.com, what author has noted is,

"If our negative emotions are very strong then we may be unable to resist acting out their telepathic thoughts, even if doing so is against our "belief" or mental programming. We may be feeling so "angry" that we have no chance to "choose" and in an instant we have perpetrated the "thoughtless" dark deed. We then "find"that we have said or done something that we had not initially intended to do.

Alternatively, when negative energy is directed in the painful "hitting" of ourself or others, it causes a negative energy flow that possibly has a detrimental effect at a later date on the biological self. Whether we are abusing self or others, the flow of that energy darkens our vibrational essence."

When we are in negative emotions, we couldn't control our behavior or mindset and it might cause us to hurt ourself or other else. The only way to get rid from it is to face the problem and stay consciously. 

San noted that the unconscious instinct of human mind is get rid from it and it create fear. However, it fuel up the power of fear in human who unwilling to face up this, this thoughts or fear that causing the production of graphic nightmares. People who misunderstand how realities get created think that staying aware of a fearful thought will cause the manifestation of it, but in truth when you bring a “conscious awareness” to a fear-based thought you are essentially not allowing it to influence your vibration, and thus it does not become a player in attracting your reality. Fears that you try to run away from are the ones that have the capacity to become a point of attraction, in some way, because, unless a negative vibration is dissolved in the wisdom/intelligence of your awareness, its energy keeps attracting some form of manifestations onto it.

Because of that, at the end of story, Baku has met a character who has similar situation but with positive thought and this is how it  change and twist back to the real Baku identity as  from creating nightmare/giving fear to other else to help people against nightmare/create happiness. 

I hope to use this story to spread out the moral value for people who depressed , try to get rid from the negative thought and mix with someone who are enthusiasm in life, especially I have targeted on teenager. The reason of targeting them is because they are still young and might experience depression that they might not handle well. (Look for target audience post, click Here)

This story might not fully help them get rid from depressed but a message for them to encourage them to have a positive mind when they are in the worse situation and develop self-confidence for the user.

Other than that, this story has few little entertainment input to attract user and gain user experience. 

References

Calmdownmind.com, (2011). What Is The Cause of Nightmares?. [online] Available at: http://www.calmdownmind.com/what-is-the-cause-of-nightmares/ [Accessed 5 Nov. 2014].

Pindariherbfarm.com, (n.d.). Negative emotions, negative thoughts and disease. [online] Available at: http://www.pindariherbfarm.com/healing/disease.htm [Accessed 5 Nov. 2014].