This week we reached out to more people that are educated in emergency preparedness. It has been difficult within our research process in getting responses back from people in general, so getting this response back was very exciting for us. City of Bothell Fire and E.M.S.' Emergency Preparedness Coordinator, Jennifer Warmke, responded to us and gave us some good information on what decision people should be making before, during and after an earthquake occurs. Below is a document that summarized all of the information she gave us directly and from various other sites she referred us too. This feedback will help us form an idea of what decisions will be offered within the simulation.
:This week we really focused on our experiential prototypes and how they would help in us narrowing down what our audiences' main concerns are when it comes to safety preparedness kits. This will help us in understanding what items we should be putting into our simulation and how it will effect the overall concept and user who is participating in the experience. Here are a few documents explaining the process of our experiential prototype and the results it provided for us:
This week we focused narrowing our audience, and clearing up our vision for our simulator game. We surveyed a hand full of people about their knowledge and thoughts on natural disasters, and grouped the like thoughts to help us grasp the general thoughts on the subject were. This helped us narrow our audience and focus for the personas. With the two personas that we created, we tried to focus on two different groups of people, the more parental and protective kind of person, and the independent tech savvy person. We believe that these to types of people will be the main users that we will have using our simulator game. Finally, we worked on bodystorming and figuring out whether to have a 3D or 2D simulator. Our first problem that we had to tackle with the thought of a 2D simulator was the loss of urgency. That feeling of needing to hurry was key aspect that we couldn't just give up for convenience sake. Other issues that we worked on and resolved were the point of view, movement mechanics, and flow. Below we have a few different ideas that we ran through while trying to solve these issues In the end we decided that a point and click 2D world where when the users click on an environment it changes to a clearer 3D rendering of that object would be the best of both the 2D a 3D worlds. After this small session we added different elements and possible UI changes to show the passage of time and have users feel that sense of urgency.
This week we met with Jason again to follow up on what he had suggested in our last meeting regarding realistic goal-setting for the game's design. After the meeting Friday, we had a better understanding of the 2D/3D parallaxing in Unreal, and were able to find other games or tutorials to use as examples. We can use some 3D assets in the 3D (perspective) space and use parallaxing to communicate movement within the space. By going this route we have the opportunity to show the entire living space (apartment, house, etc) and possibly the outdoors. If we do decide to use this design method, it won't have to be the narrative focused game we had feared.
For the next week, we will be storyboarding the game and discussing whether the user should have a visible avatar or not. We will also be meeting with as many experts as possible on our extra days off. |
A2J2Plan-It: Disaster Archives
January 2016
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