2 Man Mission Complete

Myself and Lindsey presented our completed Flash timeline to our client. Overall, he was very pleased with the outcome. We gave him some copies of the cdrom of the timeline, and it seemed to work well on his older version of PC. He liked how when you click on e.g. community, a new timeline background slides into view. The popups were just how he liked them, and were clear as when they are clicked on to popup, everything else on the timeline is faded into the background. He especially liked the interview for which he had given us assets for, as it made the story more personal. One point he did make was that at first it is not completely clear what the user has to click on. However, he did say that the pulsing speechbubbles makes it alittle easier to understand that you need to click on them.

For future development we could enhance the instructions by showing an animation that demonstrates what the user has to do to view each story. It was discussed in the meeting with the client, that in the future we could add more interviews to the cdrom, if he has more assets, i.e. more photographs of each interviewee.

This is the completed look of the timeline:

The timeline can be viewed online at:

http://www.d10dev-studio.com/ZoeBritnell/cdweb/howfar6.html

2 Man Design and Testing

This is an initial design for the timelines:

This was the design that we decided to have for the timelines.

It varies for each interview, depending on the assets that we were given. We only had photos from the person who grew up in Hong Kong (interview one, on the timeline online). This was great to have actual photos of the person, and it was unfortunate that the client was unable to obtain photos for the other 2 interviewees.

This is the menu design for the How far? timeline:

This is an example of the design for a popup which appears when the user clicks on a speechbubble:


When we user tested the timeline, the following points were raised:

It isn't very clear to click on the speechbubbles.

The writing for the interview one in white looks too much like a button.

To resolve this we made the speechbubbles 'pulse', i.e. get larger and smaller so you notice them as interactive. We also changed the font on the interview one, to match that used on the jpg images, so it doesn't look like a button.

Overall, people liked the way the timelines worked, and thought that the design and functionality was good.

2 Man Brief Mission Build

The build of the Flash timeline for the Riverside charity began with the development of the a sliding menu. This fitted in well with what we needed to achieve for displaying each interview. I also developed an XML file to store all the text for the interviews and to dynamically pull in the jpg files for the images in the timeline. It was a very good exercise to learn more about XML, and how to structure the file and pull in information dynamically. We eventually decided to have 5 separate images for each section of the interview, i.e. for Home, School, Work, Community, and Future. There is also a separate background for each interview.

Final Design and Game for Mygo

This is the final design for the Mystery House game -

This can be viewed online at:

http://www.d10dev-studio.com/AledBartholomew/mygo/house.html

Today we had a video conference with Mygo. This was very productive. They gave very positive feedback for the game. They liked the concept of the mystery house, the animations and look and feel of the design.

They had a couple of pointers for the game -

To add a function so that when people text into to play, their name appears on the television. At the moment their name only appears when they get the answer right.

Also, they would prefer a more 'mystery' angle to the game, rather than just an anagram. This can be achieved by a general knowledge trivia, so behind each window will be a general knowledge question.

Overall they were very pleased with it, and if we make the changes, this game should go live on television in Malaysia, Kazakhstan, and Saudi Arabia.

Mygo Designs

This was the initial design for the Mystery House Game:


Further development meant that we designed 2 further treatments:

Design 1:




Design 2:



Mygo feedback - they preferred design 2, and so asked us to go ahead with that one.

Scoping the Mygo Brief

The scoping process was a different experience with 5 people in the team, and decided which direction to go in. The process took alittle longer that in the 2 man brief, but it was worth it with clarifying what we were to end up with. The hardest part of the mystery house idea, was coming up with an actual mystery. We did come up with an outline for a story, but decided to simplify it into an anagram game.

The idea for the game is that there will be a short timeframe for people to text into register to play the game. Once they have registered they can play the game. On the TV will be shown a house with 9 windows. People text into vote for which room they would like to visit, eg. they text in their name, and VOTE x (x being the number of the window they want to be opened). Then after a short time the votes will be counted and the window with the highest numbers of votes will be opened. They will then see a letter on a scroll, which zooms into view. As they play the game, each window would be voted to be opened, revealing another letter. The word they have to guess is a 9 letter word. They can text in at anytime when they think they have the answer. When they have the answer right, their name gets displayed on the TV. This encourages people to vote.

Eventually the time for that game ends, and another game would come on the TV.

Video Conference - talking to Malaysia Face to Face

We had our first video conference with the team at Mygo in Malaysia. This was a great experience as they are a premier games company in the whole of Malaysia. We pitched the 3 ideas, and awaited feedback. They didn't want us to do the football game, as it has to have the capabilities to be played by multiple players at once, and the concept of the football game meant that people had to wait for their turn to play in the penalty shootout.

They really liked the Mystery House Idea, and so we went ahead and developed this idea.

Mygo Malaysia Brief

We were placed in a team of 5 people, and our team was given the Interactive Television Flash Game brief. This brief is quite a challenging one, as none of us had ever built a game for Interactive TV before. This game needs to be for an audience aged 12 to 25 years, which is quite a broad age range. It needs to be in a style that would be work with players texting in their answers and their name would appear on screen. Because of this style of game it needs to be simple, and easy to follow.

This makes the coding of the game alittle more complex, as we need to think about how to get the information from the texts into the game. Also, the gameplay is abit more restricted as people will not have a keyboard or mouse to play it, as in a web game, but only their mobile phone. Other things to consider are colours when it is on a tv as it is different from a PC. For instance, red doesn't look great on the TV. Also, lines and drawings need to about 5 pixels wide, as otherwise they flicker.

After a brainstorm, initial ideas for the game are -

A game based on the Nepalese version of Solitaire.
A mystery house game.
Multiplayer Suduko.
Pass the Pigs.
Consequences.
Football Penalty Shootout.

After discussing these options, we decided to pitch 3 ideas - the Nepalese solitaire, mystery house game, and football Penalty shootout.

Scoping 2 Man Brief

We had to ascertain what the client really wants to get out of the production of an interactive timeline for the How Far? project. Firstly, whether he wants something online or offline. We explained in layman's terms that if it is online, he would be able to update it using a content management system. If it is a cdrom, it would not be updatable. Initially the client stated he wanted it online, but when we pushed for a sign off, he changed his mind and said that he wanted an offline product. The reason for this was that he did not have a website to host the timeline, and also he wanted a cdrom to give to funders.

So the primary purpose of the cd would be a promotional tool to give to funding providers. We agreed that we would place 3 interviews on the cdrom, with a link to a pdf document holding the stories for all interviews.

So we began the build for the Flash timeline.

Mission 2 Man Brief

We were given our 2 man briefs. I am working with Lindsey and we chose the brief for Riverside Community Centre in Cardiff. This brief relates to Riverside's 'How Far?' project. How Far? is a project which records the 'distance travelled' in people's life long learning. This involves interviews being conducted with individuals. They are asked what they found was ok and not ok with what they experienced and learned in life. This is grouped under the headings of what they learned/experienced at Home, School, Work, in their Community, and what they hope for in the Future.

The Riverside community has been an independent charity running for 30 years. It has been an education provider for 5 years. There has been a focus on women, due to initially a direction of tackling gender inequality since the 1970s. But now they are working with men as well as women and minority communities. They are currently running I.T. lessons for the elderly Chinese community.

We had a meeting at Riverside with Allan Herbert. We discussed how to put Allan's Word document timeline which illustrates people's learning experiences, into a more interactive format:

· Allan stated that he would like a timeline representing someone’s life of learning, in an interactive and visual way.

· He would like it to be ideally easily updatable, a cd rom, that he could give as a tool to people to record the interviews.

· He liked the idea of clicking on part of someone’s story and more information appearing a box that zooms into view.

· The VLSC and European logos need to be on the Flash component.

This was a productive meeting, in particular with regard to learning about the client process. It was initially quite hard to unpack what the client was after. Also, Allan eventually wants a software application which the timeline would be an updatable template that people could just add their stories and text by clicking directly onto the speech bubbles and popups.