Interactive Prototype Presentations II

You forgot to introduce your group at the beginning.
Your slides had very little text, which I thought was nice.
You mentioned perhaps adding additional sub-games in the future, but I think you already have a more than reasonable set. New users to the site especially might get overwhelmed.
Be more positive about your game during the presentation...You spoke about your game in a negative light a bunch, which was unnecessary and highlighted the wrong thing. Sure you have some work to do still, but you also have a pretty substantial implementation already.
I think the telephone animations are great as they are.
For some reason you didn't have a "Telephone Changes" slide, even though you had such slides for the other games.
Consider implementing a scoring scheme (or high scores scheme) based on improvement rather than raw score.

You could probably motivate the importance of current events knowledge better. You did a nice job of showing that most people don't know currents very well, but why should they know this information? How will it help them?
Introduction was probably a little long.
The parsing idea is really nice...liked that a lot.
The "Quick Play" button makes sense, but I'm not sure the "Play" button is as clear. Maybe "Custom Play"?
In custom play when you're playing against someone, I didn't feel the presence of an opponent. Is there something you can do to make it clearer that you're playing against someone else?
You could estimate the difficulty of the question based on wrong answers.

Group:WAAM! - Feedback here

A little more practice would probably have helped, just in terms of knowing what slide is next and coordinating the demo.
Maybe change the "Add to Account" button to "Add to Memorize List" or something similar
It might be nice to have a method to browse all bible verses. If there was a particular verse that you wanted to add, could you do it easily? Seems like not.
The tab navigation at the top of the screen is a little weird...I'm not sure that your users will understand it.
The game seems like it is much more about typing than it is about memorization. I wonder if you can change the input method slightly to put more focus on words than characters. Multiple choice words that you could click on for example, might work.
How do you see what verses you've saved? I guess that part isn't implemented yet.
Add quit/pause buttons during game

Good introduction
I think demoing earlier in the talk, definitely before you show the revisions and probably before you show the tasks.
Both speakers spent a lot of time looking back at the screen and talking.
A tutorial mode might help with teaching users what to do.
The restart process is obviously a bit involved. Hopefully in the final version of the game this will be a bit simpler.
The game seems a bit too hard as currently designed. Probably the veins/arteries need to be a bit wider.
Better collision detection algorithm is needed. Not at all clear when hitting the plaque will hurt vs. not.

Slide animations were unnecessary and a bit annoying
Needed to say more about the game before showing the tasks
Had no idea what the full UI looked like until near the end
Presentation way too long before finally getting to the demo
Game itself is very cool...nice that it's pulling videos directly from YouTube
Seems like there are a bunch of little issues to iron out...
Is 5secs the right interval to pause?
What should you do about blank spots?
Can you avoid stopping mid-word?
I wonder if you could do a bit of processing on the video to guess where the word breaks are... This is outside the scope of the project for this class, but you could probably could use a threshold approach to identify quieter moments. Those might correspond to breaks between words.
Scoring is definitely going to be an issue.
I'm not sure it's the best idea to pull from all movies available on YouTube. Some videos probably don't make sense for this task (e.g. no speaking), and restricting to a subset gives you a better chance to build up a repository of information on particular movies.

Jeffrey Patzer - Apr 15, 2009 11:07:06 am

Group:That's What She Said

I think the most obvious thing I saw was that currently if I create a new account and hit submit, then it goes back to the main screen. Why can't it just log me in straight from that screen?
The how to play link is nice but does me no good on the front page. It should be on the page that lists the game types. Then its actually connected to the game types. You might even be able to have descriptions on the game buttons or something like when your mouse hovers over them you get a description.
Uniform look between screens looks nice.
I'm not really clear as to how the games are played and scored. I know you guys mentioned in class that you are competing against yourself, but then I don't think of it as a game. It's just practice. Could it be more game-like?
I couldn't quite get your demo working for the games, but I remember the pop-up screens were a little too vibrant. Maybe you could tone them down a bit.
Can you edit your account after it is created?
The title of the game doesn't really apply...not sure if you guys are going to change this or not.

Group:Clyk

I like the welcome screen layout and theme. However, I am a little worried about your title. It's not really a current events predictor per se. I think the word predictor could be changed.
Like the sign in screen.
Quick play link is good.
The game play however worries me. Everytime a question is answered the buttons move around. There is not consistency between questions.
If I am playing a game there is no way for me to keep track of my lifetime points, view any stats, or leave the game in anyway except going back to the main menu. There is no submenu for once I have signed in.
The game forces you down a very specific path that can't really be undone so easily.
I feel like the game play needs more feedback. I just kept getting questions without know if it was going to end.
The gameplay background is a little distracting.

Group:WAAM!

Not really sure why there are two separate parts to the game, can they be combined in some way? I guess you have the tabs part, but it doesn't make sense to move that way when playing a game.
Where do I see the verses that I add to the account?
Where do I create a new account?
Having to select a radio button to sort things is really opposite of what people are used to. Can you use an spreadsheet like structure that people can click the top of and have it order?
Your game doesn't help me memorize anything. It only tests my typing. You guys might want to think about exercises that increase memory and try to implement those things.
For your gameplay what is up with that thing on the bottom of the screen? Its just really distracting when trying to focus on something else to have a rainbow colored jaggy thing moving around.
There is no consistency between screens. The color is different and layouts are completely different.

Group:NGRS

Your gameplay doesn't really apply to your target audience of college students and premed students. It seems more like something a grade-schooler would play. If you want college students to play it you're going to have to make it look a lot more clean.
Vessel Navigator is cool.
Your little character is nice, but the text is too hard to read because of the coloring.
Someone in class recommended a health bar and I completely agree. A one-touch death stinks.
Like the overall color scheme though.
Is this only a navigation game? What happens once you beat it? It would encourage only certain paths, which means that if you start in one leg you won't go into an arm and not learn that path.

Group:Epicware

The Youtube icon on the log-on page is pretty big. You could make is a lot smaller. And the title of the game could be considerably larger.
Your interface overall looks very good, but the game aspect is somewhat lost. It seems like a youtube player wrapper.
I think your buddy list stuff is way overly complicated. You could slim down that page a lot.
There are too many options and things on the play screen. Once again focusing me on youtube browsing instead of playing a game. Maybe you can just have random videos queue up.
How do scores get updated? How are you actually going to score the game?
The biggest problem that I see is that this isn't really a game at this point.

David Burban - Apr 15, 2009 11:14:55 am

1. Group:That's What She Said

   - Guess the accent, language, telephone
   - Big new profile button with input validation
   - 3 modes
   - Score goes into negative
   - How does it learn or is helpful? Does it just teach the users the language variations? 
   - Doesn't seem to help machine learning, especially with the possibility of user error.
   - Back button on the top left instead of next to submit. Interesting design choice, since it makes it harder to see the button (as its out of the way).
   - Could not figure out difficulty modes
   - Smart move to change volume bar vertical instead of under the video

2. Group:Clyk

   - Current events game
   - Guess true/false or 1/3 true 
   - Match up with someone else
   - Does it help machine learning?
   - Difference between quick play and play is not obvious, especially with the html front page which can be used for such purpose
   - Parses headlights from onion and google news
   - +10, or -9
   - No way to get negative score, which doesn't seem right. If you mess up on the first question, then score should go negative.
   - What happens if the person creates a true headline unknowingly and labels it as false?

3. Group:WAAM!

   - Target groups of Christians
   - Help make memorizing more enjoyable
   - Popup of the verse is not centered, but can be dragged
   - The buttons on the side are huge, but their font is small
   - Top score button's color is same as the background of the top score
   - I thought that the idea was to memorize verses from the bible, not learn how to type, which is what it seems the game does.
   - Shows that some words are removed
   - How would you guess if 100% of the words are removed??? 
   - Can't lose. I thought the entire point of a game is that you can lose; not everyone should be able to be a "winner"
   - Bible vs. Fire found to be offensive
   - Popup is a nice function, especially since you can have multiple ones on the screen at once
   - No quit button
   - No intelligence in removing words.
   - Maybe clicking on a word instead of typing them in?
   - Make boxes longer for longer words
   - Low contrast font colors

4. Group:NGRS

   - For pre-med and medical students - to learn vascular system
   - Character is celly... a maze game
   - Good idea... creates connection with character so that it doesn't die
   - Using mouse or keyboard
   - No email confirmations yet, but a good idea
   - I'm hoping that the controls are linked to the user's profile
   - Merging flash with flex. Now ghetto in flex
   - Can people cheat? Has a navigator map
   - There should be some gravity when you're going horizontally
   - Plaque is a one hit KO

5. Group:Epicware

   - Useful for tagging/making subtitles for youtube
   - Nice slide transitions
   - Login and register buttons do not look like the buttons on the top left
   - Nice big buttons
   - Maybe make a popup that allows you to confirm instead of looking for the user in the tree
   - Bad text color when you mouse over on the top
   - What happens when it pauses in the middle of the word?
   - Any way to chat with opponent when you're in the game?
   - Rewind by 1 or .5 seconds so you can get all the words, and not have missing words during the transitions
   - Randomly generated score
   - Everyone could be wrong
   - Spellcheck algorithm
   - Skip over silent portions?

Timothy Yung - Apr 15, 2009 12:31:57 pm

That's What She Said
- Clean and simple interface
- There should be a time limit for how long the recorded video should be
- It seems like users don't choose when they start recording, only when it ends (maybe it should be otherwise)
- Do people get to choose their avatar? The avatars suggest certain accents which may affect expectations
Clyk: Current Events Predictor
- Pretty colorful backgrounds, but maybe have a solid background (at least semi-opaque) behind text to help with grouping
- The currently logged in user is kind of hidden on the top right
- Each screen should tell you how many events remain in the game.
- Maybe each screen should have a timer so that people can't look up the answers (even though that defeats the purpose)
- Anyone can type in bogus answers, the player doesn't have enough incentive to want to fool the opponent
WAAM!
- Pop-ups should appear slightly offset from each other so if you open two at once, they aren't overlapped.
- Target audience may not be fast at typing
  - The game seems partially like a typing exercise because if you can't type fast enough or have a typo, you will lose
  - The audience might prefer to survive as opposed to recalling the right answer, causing him/her to type in more wrong answers
- Suggestion: If the word is close, you get survive but be notified that you didn't get it exactly right
NGRS
- Very good idea for learning
- It seems hard to navigate diagonally with they keyboard since the directions are up/down and left/right
- The directions dialog at the beginning should only appear the first time and be able to display the instructions otherwise
- It seems too easy to die by plaque
- Suggestion: Have a mode where the user must get to the heart within a certain timer (where the timer counts down)
EpicWare: Dictation
- Looks really good, very good concept and purpose
- The lins on the top left (such as Buddy List, Profile, etc.) shouldn't seem clickable if not logged in
- Eight steps is a lot, maybe simplify it down even more.
- Form field labels are kind of hard to read, black on dark blue gradient
- Suggestion: Have some sort of title or indicator for which tab/page you're on
- The user should be able to rewind or rewatch the current 5 seconds in case he/she missed something
- There should be a timer so that a user doesn't lag for too long or a way for users to say they didn't catch what was said.
- It isn't clear how the scoring works

Shoeb Omar - Apr 15, 2009 11:28:26 am

Group:That's What She Said - That was us

Group:Clyk - Widespread lack of knowledge about current events. Game to learn about current events - has many modes like single or multi player, different levels of difficulty, and different categories. Has an interesting inputting false headlines option. Almost seems overpracticed and mechanical in the presentation which gives it an odd feel. I like the idea of pulling the false headlines from the onion - that was pretty smart. I think its weird to have the continue button in the middle of the play screen when there's more options underneath. I really like the "Need Inspiration" button and I think the two player mode is kind of cool. I think the whole game was well thought out with quick play and play modes, though I wonder if they need more explanation on the actual site about what the different modes mean

Group:WAAM! - Bible vs. Rock. The game is to make an entertaining and easy computer game that is enjoyable and effective as a way to memorize Bible verses. I'm not sure if having multiple verses pop out at the same time might confuse users, but I like the consistency in the design between screens and how the verse is displayed. The game idea is pretty cool though I wonder how much it helps actually memorize verses as users focus on typing as quickly as possible rather than memorizing, though I guess the level system fixes this. I think it makes users focus on both and might actually work decently well so it's a really good idea. I like the results screen, its clear what you got right and what you need to correct.

Group:NGRS - The cell search - to help med students learn the human vascular system. I really like the taxi cab analogy. I also like the focus on the heart because it centers on a good home location that is probably important to know some of the most about? I think I would have preferred to see the demo earlier int he presentation because the revisions aren't all that interesting and make less sense when we don't have a grounding in what the game looks and feels like yet. The multiplayer sounds really cool too. I think the vessel map being there can let users cheat and not really care about learning where they're going through rather than just following what would make sense according to our vessel map so maybe it would be better to remove it at higher difficulties or something. Also the demo seems a little buggy. another student made a good point about the plaque being annoying so maybe some more options are needed.

Group:Epicware - add CC to youtube videos. I think it's a really nice idea but I wonder how may users will actually want to do it. It isn't clear how the score is updated--is it a direct match? If so, couldn't this have issues in that both users say roughly the came thing but get penalized? Good thing you added how long the video is otherwise that could get super annoying as users might get bored and restless. The play button being in the global menu on the home screen is kind of unintuitive--it should be big and centrally placed so users know where to go. I think it's really cool how implemented it is -- I'm not sure how you're doing the demo, if someone else is playing with you or if you only work with that one video. It's unclear how the score works (apparently its randomly generated) and it might frustrate users that it isn't something easy to relate to. However that is definitely not an easy problem to solve.

Carolc - Apr 15, 2009 12:32:41 pm

- Fun and challenging to guess language and accent

- Confusing that you have two ways of submitting a guess in the telephone game. At least put the button for recording a guess directly under the entry box.

- Registration Go Back button could be placed closer to the form, so it's not so far away.

- Nice use of video for guessing language and accent.

- Great data verification in the entry form.

- Instead of Guess and Play Again, you can follow the Youtube convention of using a play icon to play and a replay icon at the end to play again.

- I have my doubts that the telephone game would help foreign language speakers. Especially since English language speakers often misunderstand each other, which is why the telephone game is fun.

- I think multiple choice is more useful than true or false

- Nice that you are providing the choice of what subjects to be tested on

- Naming of Quick Play and Play is confusing, even though you explained it, you won't be there to explain it to your users.

- The Onion articles are fairly easy to sniff out, due to their distinctive style.

- Colors are too bright.

- Change Add Verse to Account to just Add Verse, to 'speak the user's language'.

- Have the popup come up in the middle at first, rather than having the user move it.

- Might want to include audio, since audio memory decay is slower than visual decay. Make an animation of the verse as a mnemonic device.

- Good scoring mechanism.

- Peaks on the bottom are jerky - not necessary

- The box where you type in words should keep the entirety of what you typed, not just the current word.

- Why do users need to look at multiple bible verses at once?

- Interesting premise of removing words to make memorization challenging. Repetition is useful for memorization in general.

- Nice separation of Add Verse and Generate Verse buttons to prevent error.

- Good analogy to driving through NY

- Very compelling backstory that Celly is deoxygenized, must avoid the plaque, trying to get back to the heart. Multiplayer mode sounds fun.

- Nice visual design with red and white. The Cell's Search logo is a little hard to read.

- Should show the name of the veins when you have a fork in the road (currently can only see a few letters for each vein).

- How exactly does the mousing work? Is it smooth? Do you click two points to make a line? Movement is jerky.

- Show how a user can pause or stop the game.

- Interesting problem - captioning Youtube videos, helps deaf and foreign audiences

- The incentive may not be high enough to do all that tedious work.

- Very applicable categories for tabs (most viewed, recently viewed, top rated)

- The interface look and feel appear too much like that of a development environment, like Eclipse. May not attract non programmers.

- When nothing is said during five seconds, those five seconds should not be dictatable. Submit in this case is confusing.

- Impressive implementation, pulling Youtube videos from Youtube.

Yin-Zen "Johnny" Hwang - Apr 15, 2009 12:23:29 pm

Group: That's What She Said

Game to learn languages

why are there all those fields required for creating an account?

guess the accent interface, i like it, except for the two links at the top because they may inadvertently lead user away from game screen.

Group: Clyk

Game to follow current events

if there's no need to create an account to play, then why make two modes? one of them is extraneous.

horrible background + foreground for the options screens ... build dialog boxes because otherwise it looks ugly.

two-player games window view inconsistent with quickplay mode.

screen state views are really inconsistent.

Group: WAAM!

Bible vs. Rock - yet another memorization game

buttons on the right don't look like tabs, the multicolors help.

pop-ups should cascade.

i like the view user profile thing, but it would be better to make that part dominant over the score

game looks like a generic typing game, but the blank words is a good idea

Group: NGRS

Game to learn human vascular system with a maze game

yet another login screen... you don't need it for a maze game

getting to game menu while ingame is WAAAAY too confusing...make it something like clicking a button OR a hotkey

chat in game?? why?!? is this a maze game or a social network?

don't make the start two clicks -- just put instructions on the front screen

navigation too difficult... especially at diagonals -- make it more based on choosing which

path to take instead of not hitting the sides

game does not seem to scale - novel idea for association, but horrible execution. is this a maze game or a memorization game? will playing maze help you memorize?

Group: Epicware

Game of Dictation - type what is heard in the video and compare with opponent to see if same

answer -- so another ellipse game (the google images one).

another login?? o.O

register screen hard to find

game invitation hard to see -- why are they hidden in folders?

Chao Michael Zhang - Apr 15, 2009 11:20:22 am

Group:That's What She Said - Interface looks pretty nice, though it looks like it could be customized to look a little less Flex's default theme. Your logo does indicate the full name of your application/game. Perhaps you should include a full sentence "That's What She Said" under the acronym so new users know what your name stands for.

Group:Clyk - During gameplay, the background looks nice, but you might want to think about separating the text/question from the background more... maybe using an opaque background box? Is the username in the top right hand corner clickable? I can't tell. Abuse is definitely something that should be considered when the input is provided by users.

Group:WAAM! - This is my group.

Group:NGRS - Logo font is somewhat hard to read. It's dark red over light red. Maybe put a white border around it to make it stand out? You could implement the registration and email confirmation system outside of flex to make it easier. Perhaps ruby on rails or php?

Group:Epicware - Black font sometimes hard to read on the dark gradient, especially where it's really dark (registration page). Perhaps you can try using other player's previous input to detect silent areas in videos to have your player automatically skip over them.

William Cho - Apr 15, 2009 11:14:33 am

Group:That's What She Said - When you click 'create' with invalid input, it doesn't give any error feedback. Also, when you click on "Guess the language", it immediately begins the video/audio. However, you should allow users time to adjust their volume and/or replay the video multiple times, just in case their volume was initially too soft or otherwise didn't work the first time.
Group:Clyk - Should explain the difference between quick play and play on the site, somewhere nearby. The in-game buttons are really small, and it's not making use of all the space available. No negative score? For people who have horrible current events knowledge and horrible luck, their score will hover at 0. However, say a person got 1/10 questions right. Their score would usually be 0 because of the negative scores, but sometimes their score might be 10 if the correctly answered question was the last one. Perhaps, instead of not having a negative score, you should lower the penalty of a missed question relative to that of a correctly answered question.
Group:NGRS - The popup with the help info right before beginning the game is helpful for beginners, but could be annoying after the first few games. Also, it'd probably be really frustrating to hit the walls on accident ... maybe allow a couple of extra hits before gg? Also, not take the user directly to the login right after a game over.
Group:Epicware - How is the snippet of video chosen? What if the snippet chosen has no dialogue? Submit 'empty' doesn't seem intuitive for first-time users. Should it include SFX, like "-gunshot-" to provide better context?

Prahalika Reddy - Apr 15, 2009 12:46:06 pm

This game idea is interesting
I don't see how "guess the language" is useful to users to better their accent
Large buttons are easy to see and informative
"How to play" - instructions link on front page is a good idea
Account created confirmation needed - my understanding right now is that after you click "ceate" you are taken back to the main screen, without getting confirmation that the account was created. Maybe having a popup saying the account was created.
"Back" button location - IMO the back button when creating an account should be at the bottom with the "create" button b/c that's what you usually see - "back" and "next" buttons next to each other
Does "exit" take you back to the main screen? How do you logout?
The difference in color for scoring right and wrong is nice and makes it easy to understand

Nice game idea, seems really useful
I like the idea of customization for the type of events you're quizzed on, but is there an option of which types of questions you get?
The front page has too many different shapes/fonts
"Return to login" button when creating an account - hard to tell that's a button
Instructions should be available before you choose either option to play
I didn't quite understand the difference between "play" and "quick play" - was it just that quick play doesn't have any customization?
Needing to click "continue" between every question seems kind of annoying - maybe just show the change in score to the side and also show next question
Do you get a score based on whether you fooled your opponent with a false headline?
The scoring doesn't seem to be working properly yet...
Currently, when registering, the password is visible
Is there a logout button anywhere?

I really like the layout of the statistics page - it's colorful without being overbearing
Is there some place to login or create an account b/c I can't locate it
Does "adding to account" mean that will be one of the verses that shows up when you play the game?
Is there somewhere to check which verses you've added to your account?
IMO, allowing the multiple popups is annoying because you have to manually close each one if you open too many. If only one pop up was allowed at a time and opening a new one closed the original one, users wouldn't have to close all of them manually
There should be an "instructions" page somewhere - perhaps on the page where you start playing
Do the blocks move faster according to how fast the user types?
The rainbow colored rocks are the bottom if the game aren't visually appealing
Instead of random removal of words in the verse, it might be more useful to remove words that are significant to the verse
I also think there should be some sort of explanation/meanings for each of the verses so people aren't just memorizing verses, they are also learning the significance

I liked the game's main idea of helping students learn about the vascular system
The prototype is visually appealing - I like the red
Do users have to activate their accounts through the confirmation email? Because if not, the email actually seems pointless if a popup can just inform the user that the account was created
Getting to the game settings is really non-intuitive
How exactly does the chat function work? How would the users be chatting in-game
Is the goal always reaching the heart? Does the user start in various locations and always return to one?
While the user is navigating through a particular vein, it might be useful if there was text somewhere telling the users more information about the vein so they can learn more while playing
How do you exit the game or logout?
Is there a way to change the settings before you start the game?
Is there an instructions page before starting the game?

This is an interesting idea for a game, it seems like it would be very useful
It is a really good idea to do the clips in snippets. Do the snippets get longer as the difficulty rises? If so, how do you ensure accuracy?
For the game, is the idea to match your opponent in the caption?
How exactly does the scoring work for the game?
It would be useful if the word-less snippets were just filtered out and the users didn't have to deal with it.
For the presentation: it would have been nice to see images of the changes between the lo-fi prototype and the interactive prototype instead of just text
The interface looks kind of crowded with all the buttons at the top, but they are still pretty clear

Adam Kauk - Apr 15, 2009 03:34:33 pm

Group: That'sWhatSheSaid

I really like your game. I think the guessing language and guessing accent are very good. I think that the telephone game has the most potential for generating good research, but I think the motivation to play is less for that game, because it sounds really easy. The thing that makes telephone hard is that the whispering in the ear makes the sentence hard to understand, but with most Americans, it's pretty easy to understand each other.

Possible solutions:

Purposefully match up people with differing accents to make understanding more difficult.

Make a different game to go with the telephone game and make the telephone messages to be clues. When someone needs a clue, he has to ask for a clue, and it will be given to someone else and then go through a telephone process to get to him.

Group:WAAM!

I feel that in your presentation you waited too long to show us your game (or even to describe it). While you were describing the top score system and the log-in system, I was wondering what your game is.

That said, I do like your game; I might even use it to memorize some verses. The biggest lack, as some people said in lecture, was that you can't change the speed of the words as they go by.

I just played your game and it is really good. It's fun and challenging. The speed is about right. However, it would maybe be better if you made the typing case insensitive. I think it's better to keep the block sizes all the same, because that makes it more challenging as different words get removed.

Group:NGRS

Good game idea. I think it would definitely be useful to pre-med students.

I don't like the fact that if you click anywhere in the game it takes you to your game settings. Clicking is a pretty common thing, and people don't usually expect it to take you to a different place unless there is a link.

The fact that the blood cell is always in the middle of the screen doesn't seem very realistic. If it could have a certain window in which it could move before the actual screen started moving, it would look more like the blood cell is moving.

Group:Epicware

This would definitely be useful.

The biggest problem I see right now is motivation. If there is no previous annotation on a video, it will be hard to score the users; if there is previous annotation, it's not as useful. In other words, there is a starting barrier. Also, since most videos are pretty clear, there isn't much challenge to inputting close captions.

Possible solutions:

Score the person that you are playing with. This somewhat removes the competitive aspect of the game, but it could build a sense of camaraderie, in that your approval comes from the people you are playing with.

Have two people try to caption the video just by seeing it, and have a third person be the score keeper, meaning, for each snippet, he gives a correctness grade to each of the other users. Then the winner is the user with the highest correctness grade at the end. This puts the challenge back into the game for the users who are just seeing the video, so they will be motivated, and maybe it will be funny or enjoyable for the scorekeeper, giving him some motivation. This kind of solution is like taking one step back in order to take two steps forward.

Denise Ngai - Apr 15, 2009 03:54:00 pm

1. Group:That's What She Said

   - Guess the Accent, Guess the Language, Telephone
   - Nicely made powerpoint presentation
   - "How to Play" on first part of game: Good!
   - I like this game! Very fun. A lot of people actually need help recognizing languages/accents.
   - Well-made game.
   - "Telephone" seems fun/interesting!
   - I honestly really like this game -- I want to play it now!
   - Love the embedded videos.

2. Group:Clyk -- Current Events Predictor

   - Problem: Widespread lack of knowledge of current events
   - Easy: Playing game in single ploayer mode
   - Med: reigster and log-in
   - Hard: ---
   - I like how you made a webpage design to embed your flash game.
   - Pretty GUI for game/background
   - Simple game, but fun/useful -- I would play it.
   - I like the option to fool your opponent with a false headline and the "inspiration" idea is good!
   - "Flagging" headline idea is good for the fool-opponent functionality.

3. Group:WAAM! -- Memorize Bible Verses

   - Task 1: Browsing Statistics and Reccomendations
       - Help browse suggestions of verses to memorize and top scores for incentive.
       - "Popular Verses" feature is good.
       - I like the pop ups.
       - I like the Random Verse feature.
       - Top Scores ranking options are a good idea.
           - make user profiles more visually appealing; more info in them.
   - GUI very simple; not very visually appealing. More design!
   - Task 2: Playing the game
       - Playing actual game has simple GUI but it's good! Very colorful.
       - similar to typing game
       - Blanks in game are smart -- good way to test memorization!
           - basing them on percentage is smart.
   - Task 3: Retry and View End Game Results
       - Results page info is interesting and helpful.

4. Group: NGRS -- The Cell's Search

   - My group!

5. Group:Epicware -- Dictation

   - Slides very plain.
   - Nice GUI
   - I like the buddy list option
   - Nice layout for the videos getting pulled from YouTube
   - 5 second snippets are a bit annoying (For example, the Brian Harvey video example was awkward in the beginning when having snippets every 5 seconds)
       - skip over silent parts of video?
       - instead of blank submit have button that states something that indicates no words were said in video.
   - How do you check correctness/accuracy/score?
       - Data-collection from answers people type in

Anatol Tsang - Apr 15, 2009 04:26:03 pm

Group:That's What She Said - I like the idea and game (and how it relates to the group name). One thing I thought I saw on the register account is to have the error message pop up when you click the "Create" button (instead of just when you highlight the text boxes with the red marks). That way, the user knows immediately what is wrong (or one of the reasons their input is wrong). I liked the telephone game and how it was very clear at what stage the telephone game was in (who was speaking to whom). Also, the different methods of translating the message made it clear how the message was messed up during transmission. Overall, the interface was very clean and straight-forward.

Group:Clyk - Yes, the password thing needs to be fixed, but it gave me a laugh. The quick play button is interesting and useful for players who just want to try out the game to see how it is. I also liked the "Why am I doing this?" button, which can be useful. This was brought up during the questions session, but I also noted the issue with users submitting true "false" headlines to trick their user. This can be solved with volunteer users serving as "question checkers" who check to make sure a headline is actually false before it is actually submitted.

Group:WAAM! - A small question is how to account for different Bible translations? NIV is probably one of the most popular ones out there though (and you don't have all the time in the world to transcribe all the different translations). The typing interface is interesting, but I think the typing speed can be a distraction to actually memorizing the verses (people who play your game may be too focused on the typing aspect and not on the memorizing aspect). Options for the speed of how fast the word come by (as suggested by classmates) may help. What if players pick their favorite verses, keep it in short-term memory, and spam it to get points? I think there should be a way to force users to memorize some verses outside their favorites.

Group:NGRS - I think the game settings box is pretty clear, and having the escape button and a click is useful for accessing it during the game. The pop-ups are kind of small, but I think that is a Flex thing. Losing logging you out is confusing, but you did mention that it was a prototype thing. Also, having narrow veins and plaque makes the game more confusing and less conducive to learning about the different blood vessels in the body. Perhaps a way to make it better is to allow Celly to lose hp or time to move faster if she is not moving in the bloodstream (forcing users to make a decision in forks in the bloodstream). Also, maybe making the blood vessels all oriented vertical and horizontal will help with the keyboard use (no diagonal vessels!).

Group:Epicware - Can having buddies allow for collaborative cheating by users organizing to have the same inputs (not sure how you guys implemented scoring, but when you do, this might be something to keep in mind). As for your scoring scheme, one idea is to assume users are right and have the statistics change as more results pour in. Or you can a few users act as "admins" and focus on transcribing the correctness of the video (maybe they can discuss answers on a forum or something). Having all the buttons at the top makes them hard to notice at first. At your login screen, I was wondering where the register button was until I looked up there.

Chunwei Lai - Apr 15, 2009 06:02:48 pm

Group:That's What She Said - Validation could be more visible as opposed to having to mouse over the fields (or make highlighting of fields more apparent). The guessing screen is much too small and not very visible and the general interface seems very simple. However, the concepts used were great (especially the "telephone" game), use of webcam to record is also another great idea, and the changes from the low-fi prototype were reasonable and well-justified. I hadn't noticed the volume bar until it was mentioned, perhaps it could be more visible.

Group:Clyk - Good idea with parsing different sources and I hope that will end up working (parsing of RSS feeds may be easier than screen scraping, maybe easier if you don't use Flex/ActionScript3 but something like Python) - will work great with the "need inspiration" feature. The overall GUI looks really simple and the low-fi prototype looked much better.

Group:WAAM! - Some color choice not so good (light green on white background) but the changing of background colors to reflect the current screen is a wonderful idea. I'm not so sure about allowing so many pop-ups, perhaps you should just allow one modal pop-up and let the users cycle through them on the pop-up (what would the behavior be if I open a pop-up and switch screens?). Interface is straightforward and the game play looks like it should do a good job of helping players memorize. On the result screen, the use of green and red to signify correct/wrong results allows player to easily spot mistakes. Changes were well-justified. Additional things that may be nice are quit button and adjusting the speed of the scroll (difficulty?).

Group:NGRS - Good color scheme to go with the game. Pausing user interaction to describe the game is a good way to guide the user but perhaps it should be done through a "Tutorial Mode" (and can be skipped). Collision detection is never easy and I would suggest that instead of putting so much focus into user moving, focus should be placed on user navigating. Navigating meaning that the cell is ALWAYS moving and the user simply just controls direction. Instead of using UP+LEFT to move diagonally which is hard and tedious, allow maybe use "QWEASDZXC" as opposed to just "WASD" to help with diagonal movement. There are other alternatives to be considered and evaluated, hopefully you will find one that fits.

Group:Epicware - Good overall interface design but font choice could be better which didn't really flow with the interface. As suggested by others, maybe allowing a "Silent" button instead of having to submit when nothing is spoken. Maybe even consider adding a feature where user can mark the start of when something is spoken so you program can be smarter about where to start clips. Also playing a couple of seconds before each clip in addition to the clip itself could be helpful for cut off words (or maybe a feature where user can tag a clip as cut off and the next clip can play a longer clip).

Sean Hansen - Apr 15, 2009 06:29:44 pm

Group: That's What She Said - Your interface was, in general, very nicely set up, and I thought the changes you made to the Guess the Accent/Language games set-up were wise. Since you mentioned users having trouble distinguishing the volume bar for what it is, I suggest you make it green; that's a pretty standard volume color. The only other thing I noticed is that the "How to Play" link's location doesn't make much sense; I didn't notice it until the end of the presentation because it's where I thought more info about account creation would be.

Group: Clyk - I noticed that the play screen was pretty minimal and I think that playing the game would be a bit more enjoyable if it were spruced up a bit. You guys mentioned using Google popularity data to implement different difficulties, and that's a good idea.

Group: WAAM! - Although I hate puns, I still thought your game is on the right track; your method of helping people memorize whatever looks to be quite effective. I'm a little touchy about the red x button to close windows, though; while it works fine with plenty of browsers, I think it looks tacky in a game.

Group: NGRS - The first thing that struck me was that every screen in the game is red except for the pop-ups; why is that? Anyway, kudos on implementing any kind of real-time action, as I'm sure it was quite a pain in the ass. The only thing I have to suggest is to allow the user to have some say in what part of the vascular system they'll study.

Group: Epicware - It seemed like there was a lot of the interface we didn't get to see or had barely any time to see, so I don't really know what to say other than that the folder-based implementation of the buddy list seemed kinda wonky.

Alan Young - Apr 15, 2009 07:57:40 pm

Group:That's What She Said - I think this game solves a good problem and the telephone game particularly seemed fun and helpful at the same time. The guessing the accent seems to me to be not as helpful in solving a problem, which is for people who are learning a new language to try to speak clearer without an accent. Also, feedback for registering will help so that user knows that they have registered properly.

Group:Clyk - My group.

Group:WAAM! - I really like the idea and the way the gameplay was designed. At first, I thought that it relied too much on typing skills, but you guys said it helps with muscle memory, which makes a lot of sense. Changing the speed of the blocks, the length of the blocks would help. Also, another idea could be "powerups" that you could use to bail you out 3 times in a round.

Group:NGRS - I think the game design is good and it directly addresses the problem. The main problem I have is with the control. I would suggest a different gameplay where Celly is going from the bottom of the screen to the top and choosing to go left or right (which makes it more difficult to guess if I'm going up or down).

Group:Epicware - I think 5 seconds might even be too long especially if someone says a lot of words (it becomes more about memorization than ability to determine how clear the words are). Also, I think that after the first snippit is played, the user should be given a set time to type it in, and then the game should automatically play the next snippit. That way, the user won't have to leave the keyboard during the game.

Derek Liu - Apr 15, 2009 08:32:24 pm

Group: That's what she said

Like the idea of your game
The interface was very well laid out and easy to navigate
Liked the implementation of the videos
The accent guessing game could get difficult (for example I didn't know what an Austrian accent sounded like).
I feel the player should be able to confirm their answer, if the user chooses an answer accidentally he automatically gets it wrong.

Group: Clyk

No feedback from rollover on quick play/play button from the main screen.
Can't go back to the main menu from any screen, only the actual in game screen.
Don't need an account to play, should need one for Play and not Quickplay.
Allows users to follow current events.
Questions are repeated in this version.

Group: WAAM!

The game isn't very straightforward so there should be an instructions or tutorial screen.
Not sure what add to account does.
How do I know what I added to my account? Is there an account settings page or something?
I liked the typing game feel.
Simple layout
The game idea can apply to memorizing pretty much anything.

Group: NGRS

Liked the red color scheme and layout of the interface.
Collisions and gameplay still buggy.
No exit or main menu screen
Directions or information on how to pause the game or reach settings would be nice.
Tutorial on how the game is played would also be nice.

Group: Epicware

Very impressive pulling the videos and putting them in your program.
Good problem to address in captioning youtube.
I liked the layout and the buddy list option.
Like others have pointed out: What if the video doesn't contain dialogue?
Maybe add a timer during the gameplay so users don't lag.

Matthew Can - Apr 16, 2009 02:00:53 am

Group:That's What She Said - I think the problem you are trying to solve is an interesting one. Your game definitely has a good purpose. You did not need to spend any time on account registration. It doesn’t really add value to your presentation or show off the interesting parts of your game. The interface is simple and clean. I like that. You made nice changes to the low fidelity prototype. It seems like your user testing helped reveal a lot. Is there any reason that the exit button is a big circle? It makes it stand out because the other interface components are rectangular. I’m not sure that’s a good thing because it competes with the video for the user’s attention. Try making it a smaller rectangle and see what that looks like.

Group:Clyk - The problem you guys are trying to solve is a good one. I hardly ever have the time to keep up with the news. I like the look of the game screen where the user answers questions. It is probably the cleanest interface I have seen so far and the choice of colors is great. I’m wondering what the logic was for laying out the options they way you did. The continue button is between the number of players and the categories.

Group:WAAM! - The color choice for the whole interface is a strange and I think the colors are incompatible with each other. You might want to use even lighter colors for the backgrounds and darker colors for the text so that there is enough contrast. The yellow background for “Verse of the Week” was especially bothersome. It’s nice that you show people the most popular verses. The game interface where the stick person jumps across platforms is nicely designed. It draws the user’s attention to the moving platform. In the top scores screen, instead of providing a separate link to the person’s profile, you could just make the text of their name a link that is clickable.

Group:NGRS - The dark red background in your screens is a little hard on the eyes. Can you make it a lighter red? Moreover, you use so many different shades of red throughout the interface that it’s hard to read some of the text. For example, it is hard to read the name of the game, “the cell’s search.” As for the game, you might want to make a health bar so that hitting the plaque is not an instant kill. In the game settings, I noticed the check boxes were on the right of the text. You might want to make it on the left of the text so that each check box is right next to its corresponding label.

Group:Epicware - When you were discussing the changes you made to your interface, it would have been more helpful to show the changes rather than just write them out. The dark interface colors look really nice. You guys did a great job on the layout and design. It’s also nice that you got this to load data from YouTube and that it’s working with a real server in the back end. You should probably take some time to figure out how scoring is going to work in your game, since that will be an important part of playing it.

Ling Chen - Apr 16, 2009 03:59:18 am

Group That's What She Said

Language game
I think it's quite a cool idea, I would play the telephone with my friends when I am bored
Not sure how I could learn a language from it though
What if I made a mistake while creating profile, can I edit or change it?
I like the icons that indicates who's doing what during the telephone game
Screens are consistent, which I like, keep it that way
Good job moving the volume bar away from below the video
Does the "Exit" button log the user out or take you to the game selection screen?

Group Clyk

current event predictor
spend way too much time on problems and solutions part of the presentation
I noticed two horizontal scroll bars while registering for an account
Nice background for the questions, however, there were too much space, the questions looked small compared to the screen, make better use of the space?
The options screen background looked a bit too busy, I was expecting similar color to the questions screen
The idea of creating false headline to fool your friend is fun, and the "inspiration" idea helped too
Big changes from low-fi

Group WAAM!

Bible vs. Rock
Good idea, it did looked more like a typing game than memorization
View verse's pop up screen should be in the center maybe, my eyes were focused in the center, but the window popped out to the right
Is there a "close all" button for all the popped up windows screen if there are too many of them open?
The choice of pink is a little too bright, making it hard to read the words on that tab
The stick person is hanging in midair when finished with a level, need something better
When there were no more life left, a reset button showed up, did you mean "restart"?
On the results page: the fields are not aligned, which looked a bit funny to me
Nice job combining top scores and top players tabs
Many of the changes from low-fi were clear
Being able to change the moving speed would be valuable
the screens for the three tasks were really different, was that on purpose?

Group NGRS

The Cells' Search
I can see it being valuable to students studying about the Vascular System
Game setting pop up looks a little small, the writings were a little hard to read
Home screen title color (bright red) was hard to read on the choice of background color
why register again when trying to start game again? It was a little annoying
I don't know if if I like the idea of clicking taking me to settings, what if I am using my mouse for controlling?
Does celly always start from the same place or are the choices?
Can you view the whole maze somehow, not just the general direction?
Going diagonal is a little difficult

Group Epicware

Youtube Dictation
I can definitely see how it would be useful for future use of videos, tagging and categorizing, etc
There seems to be some problem with the log in function
Log out doesn't bring you to the home screen? I thought that was odd.
The silent part of the video was kind of weird
5 seconds was a pretty good choice, although when a lot of words were said, it was kind of hard to remember all of them
Can you replay the snippet you didn't really catch?
Can you slow down the playing speed? That might be helpful to people who are slow like me

Anjana Dasu - Apr 16, 2009 04:16:23 pm

Great idea. It's so extensible. Not only would this be an asset to employees of companies where groups work out of different countries in varying time zones across the world, but it would also be an excellent tool for collecting comparative data on languages (as you mention in your interactive prototype write-up).

I thought your interface could have been more elegant if you took more care in design choices:

On the first screen, you write "new profile" for creating a new account. This seems a little misleading because it doesn't follow normal conventions-- usually it would say something like "create new account."
On the first screen, it looks like you are trying to give equal weight to the two options-- creating a new account and logging in by making each take up the same overall amount of room, but it seems awkward to have a huge button with large text saying "new profile." Also, why is how to play a link and not a button-- it seems arbitrary.
In modifying the registration screen from your lo-fi, you removed the option to re-set all the fields. Was there some reason for this?
I think the volume bar on the right side is hardly visible, and also it seems sort of out place.
I'm not really a fan of the exit button as a circle, since all your other buttons are square-ish.
The buttons on top of the video are dull/have little contrast. Maybe you should aim at something like youtube end-of-clip buttons status (you know, bright red?).
The you were way off-- not even close message is kinda discouraging :\

Ok, sorry to nitpick, but I don't know if Current Events Predictor is a great title. First it's not very catchy. Second I don't see how the players are "predicting" the current events because they are just deciding whether a headline is true or false (leave aside the fact that predicting a current event is an oxymoron anyways). Other than that, I think the game is pretty good. Cool that you are parsing from google and the onion.
Interface-wise, the main screen graphic looks pretty amateur. There are too many colors that don't form a nice scheme.
I know what quick play and regular play are because of your explanation in class. However, a first time user might not get this. It's particularly weird that the names are so similar. Quick play isn't very indicative of what this mode would be used for other than the fact that it's supposed to be faster. I think a better name according to your use case (getting the daily news as a quick grab and go overview) would be something like on-the-go (this could even be a fresh iphone app).
Why is it when I go to quick play, at the bottom it says "does this even happen"?
So once in a while, I got a blank headline or something that was obviously not a headline like RSS feed/Suggestions in quick play, so you should watch out for that. You should also make sure you only put in AP style headlines that actually indicate what the piece of news is. I don't know how you'd do the later, but I think it's pretty important because its hard to answer if things like Ray Liotta takes a slightly comedic turn are true or false.

The main thing I was wondering after your presentation was how effective your game will be for memorization. The way I saw the game was that it could be easily and effectively be used to improve a player's typing speed. I wasn't convinced that people would memorize the bible verses in the process because they'd be too concerned with trying to get to the next word, rather than learning the current word. If it has been working for your test users, that's great; I just kinda thought there was obstruction of the intended locus of attention with the fast typing aspect. At least for myself when watching your demo, I could only remember one of the words that was taken out in your demo, and that was Love because it had been capitalized unlike the other words, but I guess maybe if I played it and had a tangible experience, then I would have remembered more.
I thought your interface was mismatched in the sense that you had pastel buttons and a pastel background and then standard flex turquoise font and white/gray tabs. You could easily revamp this to be more visually pleasing.
I don't know if your Top scores page is that effective, in the sense that the user has to know how which type of scores he wants to see and then choose it-- the placement of the radio buttons is a little weird because they're in the center, and usually they are left aligned. Maybe you could have 2 separate data grids on the same page with the 5 top scores of either kind.
The random verse generator buttons and text box are not spaced evenly-- this is kind of weird.
Using a textbox makes the verse seem editable.
The results screen doesn't match the rest of the interface stylistically.

I think your idea is solid, and the taxi cab analogy was apt. Both your presenters effectively explained the concept and interface.
Major props on implementing the actual game part in flex. Hopefully you guys can get it working in flash and integrate the swf into your project (if I understood correctly, that's what you guys wanted to do eventually, right?). What's there right now is good for the prototype, but it would be even better if eventually Celly moved rather than the background just because when he's going straight in areas where there's no text for reference, it looks like he's not moving. I'm sure that would be quite a task but if you could handle it, it would be sick. I know you guys were big on the user controls customization, but I think limiting that might make it easier to do a flash implementation.
Finally, a group that customized their flex interface. Btw, you can customize alerts using style sheets (currently those are blue and your entire interface is red which is kind of funky). You can't see it in the design view, but when you run it, it will take effect.
I'm not a fan of the timer game timer in a panel esp. because of the drop shadow. Could you integrate it more smoothly into the rest of the interface?
I think have just ESC to bring up the menu would be better rather than clicking because players might click by accident. Another thing is, a player might think that he/she has to click outside of the vein to bring up the menu, and if he tries doing that he would face death by plaque.
I think it would get annoying for an experienced user to keep getting alerts. Especially alerts that to which he/she has to respond.
I love Celly the Cell :) He's a cutayyy

Cool to see a game with a purpose that is intended to solve a problem rather than make the user learn. Youtube could definitely use this to help with subtitling.
Awesome to see that you pulled videos from youtube.
Why does it say "type yourself" under Youtube Dictation? Ohh... it's this supposed to be the tagline like "broadcast yourself"? Yeah.. you should integrate the two title logos... the border around the youtube part separates it and makes it unclear...
I don't like the button format at the top-- it's off center, which would be fine if it was supposed to be balanced with the login/high score part, but because it's so much longer... it just isn't aesthetically pleasing.
The navigation is also kind of funny because if you first thing hit PLAY!, you get a bunch of videos and you select a video, and then you look at the playlist. The play with keysmasher button is way at the bottom. It's nowhere in your locus of attention. A user might just click on the video over and over again wondering why nothing is happening.
I feel like your main play interface is wayyy too cluttered because you have the difficulty levels and play button at the bottom, a bunch of random white space, and the videos at the top tabbed panel become too overwhelming.
The chatting/buddy part is cool.

Nalditya Kusuma - Apr 16, 2009 06:16:51 pm

THAT's WHAT SHE SAID
how to play link should be on the gamelist page
probably make a better incorrect box?
Does "exit" button mean exit game or go to main menu?

CLYK
Can you put an option so the user don't have to be bothered to click on 'continue' after each question?
Weird scoring-- +10 / -9 ??
how about some logout button?
I can see my password when i typed in it

WAAM!
The typing is interesting coz some people memorize better by typing/writing stuff down.
Can i see top 10/15 list instead of just 5?
Are you guys gonna input all verses from the bible? How about some input system?

NRGS
How about making the option menu in the middle of the screen?
Can personalize controls (map the keyboard keys to my desired functionality)?
Can you make the player always focused in the middle of the screen?

Epicware
"Let's play" button is big and in color. Like it. But I think green is a better color.
In the buddy page can you automatically expand the folders when it loads up?
The "add" "send invite" "remove" buttons for the buddy list is way down on the bottom. Can you put it in between the "Buddy List" text and the "Online" folder? maybe put some lines as the separators

Cuong Ngo - Apr 17, 2009 12:25:17 am

Group:That's What She Said My group

Keep updated with the news
Problem is fully addressed
Game is well structured, with multiple difficulty levels, categories
General layout nicely organized, user-friendly
Form-based interface with buttons, textboxes
Simple slides, demonstrating what's been done, and clarifying confusion from the audience

A fun way to memorize the Bible
Tabbed interface is colorful
Game screen is comical
Gameplay is somewhat fast paced, can we change the speed?
Pop-ups might distract the player
Well chosen pictures to illustrate the changes from lo-fi to prototype
Speakers lost the audience here and there, but presentation went well overall

Well defined solution, helpful for medical students
Fun gameplay, user-friendly interface
Foreground colors almost blend in background color
Text in the slides kind of small, hard to see

Adding captions to youtube videos
Multiplayer mode can be fun
No pictures to illustrate the changes from lo-fi to prototype
Questions from the audience not fully addressed
Demo interrupted due to technical difficulties
Speakers lost the audience here and there

Sean Kim - Apr 17, 2009 01:52:04 am

Group:That's What She Said

I really enjoyed playing this game. I am looking forward to release the next version soon. :)
users can confuse about the three option for games. it will be better if there are brief explanation below the buttons
I don't think the invite button, the ranking button, and exit button is located well. maybe it's better to combine them if they aren't totally related with playing a game
"# of rounds played" is so small that is hard to recognize
when user clicks the invite players, it will be better if there are one address input box and message box rather than five address boxes. and it can be included with "invite more" button
top player list will be better if it shows player's score
I think the purpose of the game "play telephone" is little bit unrelated with the other options

Group:Clyk

First of all, I really like the background and colors used for each windows.
I am confusing about what the GUEST button in the right top corner does.
It will be better for user to know how many questions left now.
There are lots of "continue" button. sometimes it's confusing what the "continue" means
After clicking the normal "play" button, the position and size of the "continue" button needs to be changed.

Group:WAAM!

the tab buttons in the top are a kind of small, compared with the main buttons
it doesn't looks good to align the sentence in center. maybe left alignment is better
users can want to know what verses are added into their accounts
yeah, speed.... if users can't control the game speed, it looks like a typing game
when I tried to play the game, I was stuck for an additional space putted mistakenly
after user fails a stage, it will be better if there are more options such as playing with slower

Group:NGRS

well done with the flash player. it looks like a real game playing with arrows
it will be better to indicate the names of veins more clear
now, the Graphical representation of the locator map is so small that user will be hard to get good information from playing this game. I think user needs more graphical relation between the path of the celly and the locator map
I believe you already know this, but it is a kind of annoying if user hits the wall of vein and a game ends.

Group:Epicware

my wonderful group :)

Timofey Titov - Apr 17, 2009 02:05:49 am

Sound quality of the audio samples wasn't good. Maybe consider using flash for streaming.
Registration screen is too long for a game.
I liked the color matching.
Why a big exit button?

Maybe add a time limit?
Why are clouds used as the background image?
It would be nice to have some kind of social aspect to make it more fun.

Remove buttons - put a Hyperlink instead
Multiple popups is annoying. Maybe a tabbed interface?
Adjust speed of typing.
Integrate everything into one website. A standard color scheme would be nice too.
I don't think it's good to have one button ("Add Verse to Account") on top and the other on the bottom.
Implement some kind of mnemonics?

Hmm, presentation went by too fast.
Nice red color scheme!
The map seems too short. Make it replayable.

Your 1-2-3 instruction is excellent.
Words are interrupted during the short cycles.
Maybe there is some simple way of detecting silence audio samples?

Rohan Dhaimade - Apr 17, 2009 02:22:23 am

No introduction?
Don't show validation during your presentation, it is not impressive.
you don't tell the user that there is an erorr when you press create (the password were mismatched but there was no prompt why the error occured)
The correct/incorrect prompt sill showed up when you switched games, you should hide it when the user exits.
Telephone game was excellent, overall great game that would be very useful. The animation was good and though the telephone game could use some incremental scoring system on how well others understand your thing?

The login box on the right is kinda weird, you should center it and have that news on the left. It seems that login should be the focus of attention on the app and not some news thing.
Why did you get the same headline twice during the presentation?
Your green background makes it hard to read the font, since it's small and hard to read.
Are two players playing the same computer or over the net?
What prevents a opponent from putting in a truthful piece of news and just tricking his opponent?

No pause during the game.
The biggest criticism is that the game, while AWESOME, is more about typing than memorizing bible verses.
adding to account and creating account are missing?
Details about the verse and the background of the verse would be good, I mean, a bad Bible quote out of context is dangerous. \
The rocks on the bottom could just be a stationary piece of flame.
Did you make text case insensitive?

I don't see how the paths teach you the vascular system. Doesn't the mini-map just kind of ruin the game as you already know your position so you're just memorizing the position on the mini-map?
Quitting and restarting game when game ends = Bad idea, you already know this. Just mentioning it.
Make the arteries wider so its easier to navigate.
have a countdown timer that means you need to get to location in certain amount of time instead, that makes it more fit with your game theme of "must get to heart before becoming deoxygenated".
Maybe have a health bar?
Disable game instructions or have a " don't show this again" or something.

Logout keeps you in the same game screen, it didn't change. That's not good
Logged in as and the other stuff kinda floats weird. You should make sure its aligned properly
Do invitations have a time limit that will expire? Can you only invite online players who are currently there, what happens if htey log off?
Your selected item dissapers when you got top rated and recently viewed.
Can you embed the subtitles into the youtube or provide some interface that does?
The issue of mid-words and quiet times are very hard to deal with but good luck.
Awesome idea overall though.

Stephanie Shih - Apr 17, 2009 02:18:26 pm

Group:That's What She Said - Very interesting game idea! Though, rather than having an error message pop up when something is wrong/missing in registration, find some way to highlight the erroneous entries? With an error script on top indicating what was wrong. I especially liked the "Telephone" game though. The accent guessing game though... well, I guess there's no real way to describe typical accents from various countries to give a person some idea (like a review session, you might say), but it would be nice if you could.

Group:Clyk - Beautiful layout. It's nice to see that care was taken not just to where each element of the game went, but also to the aesthetics. The "Need Inspiration?" button is great. As has been mentioned, password should be censored out, but, well. it was hilarious, haha. All in all, a good and practical idea and pretty well executed.

Group:WAAM! - The "X" close button looks really awkward on the popups, possibly because there is no header section like in a window. It would probably be a better idea to simply have a button that says "Close" instead. Incidentally, whether it's death by fire or death by rock, it's... not very encouraging? Seriously, the implication you're giving is that you fail at life because you can't get it right. Also, the game format seems more like you're encouraging them to better learn typing than actually learning the verses. (I mean, wpm? Really?)

Group:NGRS - Taxi cab analogy was great. The idea is awesome, and using a maze to teach it is brill. However, I don't see the reason that registering is required. Why not make it more like arcade games, where when a new high score is achieved, a user can enter whatever nickname s/he wishes?

Group:Epicware - A brilliant idea, and very useful. Panels look odd just drifting there - maybe border them? (Like, the registration section, the log-in section, etc.) And why not allow video to playback at request of player to make sure words were heard correctly to type in? Also, form label texts are difficult to read with that size and colour. Also, will you allow subtitles as well, or just literal transcriptions? (Different tracks?)

Saung Li - Apr 17, 2009 05:24:51 pm

Theme: communication problems for people of different languages or the speech impaired -- nice
The create account validation forms should provide more feedback when a user forgets to enter something or makes an error. Merely highlighting the box red may not explain enough. Perhaps have a pop up telling the user of the errors
Playing video clips of people talking in a different language or accent is cool! Let's people learn about them more easily.
In the telephone game, what's up with the figures moving around at the start? I didn't really get what was going on so I was confused
There should be feedback showing how many points a player gets
Some of the button sizes are inconsistent across screens
The screens look kind of plain. Perhaps more colors can be used.
You could add a feature where people can add videos instead of just the game makers. That way the database can be created/updated more rapidly. If this is done, though, maybe have ratings so that bad videos get filtered out.
For creating an account, provide feedback that the account has been successfully made
May want to have a screen showing the instructions

Current Events Predictor - address lack of knowledge of current events. kind of a mundane name though
When playing the game, the buttons are small and hard to see
Button sizes change a lot across screens. This makes it a bit confusing.
There should be an option to choose how many headlines to go through, since players should determine how long they want to play
Having players generate false headlines is kind of tricky. What if a plays always inputs bad headlines to help opponents, and don't care about getting more points himself?
What if players input a true headline when it is supposed to be false? How could the game system check for this?
Getting points for fooling an opponent is a good motivator to keep them from making poor headlines. Perhaps also add a small penalty for not being able to fool the opponent.
The 2 player mode isn't implemented yet...Can't help you much there
Perhaps have a feature where players can help flag headlines as true or false, and have them generate/find headlines and news.
When playing the game and going through headlines, show how many are left.

Bible vs Rock - help memorize Bible verses
This game is great because it can be expanded to include other topics besides religion
In the browsing and recommendations task, perhaps players should be ale to make recommendations by rating verses instead of just going by how many views of a verse there are. Having more views doesn't necessarily mean the verse is better.
When a verse is added to the account, what does the player do when he is done memorizing it?
How exactly does the player get points? How does the game know that the user actually memorized the verse for points?
The typing game is cool. Maybe make the boxes more slower for beginners, and faster for experts. Have game modes.
End game screen looks very different from the rest of the game. This makes the game look bad.
Green text on yellow background makes the screen unpleasant to look at. The red buttons don't really look good either.
The game results screen looks pretty different from the other screens, too
Button sizes are inconsistent across some of the screens. This makes it more confusing.
Add a quit button in the game for more user control
The box game seems more like a typing game. Maybe another game you could do is make it multiple choice to emphasize recognition over recall. It's hard to type fast and memorize at the same time.
Allowing for multiple verses to pop up isn't really useful on such a small screen.
The Add to Account button should be changed to Add to Memorize button because I'm not sure what exactly I'm trying to do with the verse when I'm adding it to my account.

The cell's search - learning about the human vascular system
Game settings page- button sizes are inconsistent
Racing to get to the heart is a great idea, but are there other locations to get to? Seems like it would seem repetitive going to the same place every time
Pop-ups are distracting since they change the color of the whole screen. They are annoying if the player already knows what is going on.
Game is pretty buggy, like the cell suddenly jumping at the beginning
Having to log on every game is very tedious. Provide some way to save the game and keep players logged on.
Navigating through the diagonal paths in the game is very hard. The problem is to learn the vascular system, not test how well the user can tediously squeeze through paths. Maybe make the paths bigger.
Give more health to the red blood cell so it doesn't die in one hit and have to start all over again, since that is frustrating.
Reducing the annoyances overall would be very helpful, like not having pop-ups all the time
Perhaps have a way to change the settings before actually starting the game
Game settings pop up is a bit small and clutter so it is hard to read

Dictation - captions for online videos - Very interesting idea!
No easy or cost effective way for adding captions to videos. So true. I watch a lot of anime and need to way for subs to come out all the time :(
Is the buddy list really relevant to the game? What would buddies do together in the game?
The instructions and high score list screen is a bit cluttered with the big tables
The red text on dark blue screen in the registration makes the screen hard to read
The buddy list looks like a boring tree. It looks like a file structure as if it is not part of the game.
Having all the buttons at the top instead of within the screen kind of makes it confusing for navigation because they look like tabs, and tabs each perform different tasks
The snippets cut off words. What does the player do then? Does the player add that or not?
Perhaps instead of 5 seconds show 6 seconds with 1 second replayed to replay words that are cut off.
How does the scoring work? Do players have to type in the exact words that match each other to get the point?
What if many players make a common mistake and put captions incorrectly?
Having lots of silent portions in the video may make the game boring.
Add a "silent" button if no one says anything in the snippet.
Having the videos start and stop all the time may get annoying, especially if the movie is good and the player actually just ends up wanted to watch it.
Is there a way to slow the play speed for people who type slow?
Maybe add a feature to rewind in the game in case the player misses it. It would be kind of irritating just missing a word and wanting to hear it again but not being able to

Kevin Huey - Apr 17, 2009 07:52:37 pm

I really like your idea.
Those avatars in the telephone game suggest that the user is of a certain background, so different avatars would be nice. Maybe you could signify the avatar by looking at the user's IP address and then giving them an avatar based on their location.
For the other two games maybe you could give bonus facts after the player has guessed. I'm thinking something along the lines of "This is why the language is ____: <insert reason here>". This way the player learns something without going through hours of trying (and possibly failing) to understand why he is getting it wrong.

Not to be mean or anything, but couldn't people just glance on Google News or something and get the same info in the headlines they get? I mean, this is related to the headlines, and most people seem to have Google or Yahoo as their home page, so on the front of the page the headlines are there. The people who'd play this game probably would already have seen these headlines anyway. It doesn't pertain to your interface, but I'm just speculating.
Regardless, your idea is an interesting one.
I don't see the point of having 2 modes of play. Actually, I don't see the reason to need an account.
Fluidity is the main thing about your interface. It contrasts everywhere, from the style to the actual gameplay. As for your single-player game, I don't think there should be stoppages between each headline. It really slows down the pace. I realize that it takes away the point of the user actually remembering the headline (and learning something from this game), but it takes away from the game pace aspect, thus making it feel less like a game.

With the better random word generator, I do think this game could potentially be the most useful in the class.
I am very distracted by the very bright colors moving back & forth on the bottom of the game screen. It got annoying very quickly. Very annoying.
BUT the color scheme definitely fits the theme of the game. So I say at least keep the color scheme.

How do people know exactly where each part of the body is in real life from what we see right now?
I think for people to learn about 'where they are located', you should probably have those tips about each place.
Larger area to move around, some other obstacles that are unique to the places your cell is currently in. Maybe even bacteria trying to attack you.

Man...good luck with the correctness detection & scoring. I think you're going to need it (the luck, that is).
All your ideas for the interface are very well done, but I think you're totally strapped on the main part.
I would consider hand-picking the videos and specially setting time limits and stuff for each one. It's definitely more time-consuming and has storage issues, but you get rid of some other problems (such as stop in-between words, pick video with no words, etc.).

Siddharth Shah - Apr 18, 2009 10:11:58 am

Fun game but also important to the real world... A true GWAP.
Embedded videos were handled very well; I liked the placement of the buttons on the video.
Somewhat long registration form, but I guess it's necessary if you wanted to collect data that you could analyze later.
The Exit button being a circle makes it stand out more.
Nice presentation.

Nice backgrounds; they add interest and make the game look better than just having a boring solid or gradient background
Two modes: Deciding whether a headline is real or fake, and making up a fake headline.
Creating headline is to me an awkward game; also, the problem of a user creating a real headline is not completely handled (what happens AFTER a different user flags it? What if a user just flags any headline that they don't have the answer to, just to try to protect their score? What if somebody just flags every headline indiscriminately?)
Nice job with the scoring; it follows the scoring of some of the dynamic programming algorithms I learned in BioE.

What about also creating a generic version that lets one user (like a teacher) prepare the content that the other users (students) should learn? This seems like a solid way to make the game more important (and more complicated, I know).
Really basic UI; I feel like you could have done more with it. Also, the rocks look weird, but they're better than the fire :)
As much of a typing game as a learning game; try making it so the user can pick how much time they have to type the word.
The blocks you jump on are kind of plain; make them clouds or something? The gaps between them don't actually seem like enough for the little man to fall through.
Maybe make a real animation for man jumping to the next block instead of just jerkily changing his x-coordinate.

Group:NGRS - My group

The buddy list seemed pretty far along in its development, maybe even more so than the actual game.
You could have chosen a better example for your presentation than the 61a lecture, especially since that video highlighted some of the problems with your game.
It cuts off mid-word sometimes; you should perhaps have a rule that cut-off words should be typed in the next frame, or maybe have a "Go 1 more second" button to let the word be finished and THEN type it into the current frame.
You should maybe have a button for the snippets where nothing is said; that way users won't be confused about whether they can click Submit with nothing entered in the box.
Scoring needs to be implemented, and it seems kind of complicated and will get slow as more users play the game. The score should be based on how many words BOTH users put in (if they both entered a word in the same place, it's probably correct). But then both users would get the same score, which defeats the competition aspect. So, you also need to know which word was entered in that spot by previous users for the same snippet, and then give more points to the user who entered that word.

Bernardo de Seabra - Apr 18, 2009 09:46:04 pm

The registration screen should lead to the main page, with the user logged in in case the registration was successful.
Noticed a glitch with scoring (negative score)
The colors are fun and inviting along with the white background.
The telephone game seems to be a good analogy to real life struggles in understanding a foreign accent.

There should be an easy way to go back to the main screen.
The registering screen should be resized in order to remove the scrolling bars.
Good layout organization. Clean.
Not a big fan of pop-ups.

The colors/graphics could be improved.
Good technique for memorization (blanks).
The inputed text should be in a more contrasting color with the background box.
Concerned that it might be more of a typing improving game rather than memorization.

The instructions pop-up could be optional. Very annoying for those that already have played the game before.
Not sure how to quit the game. Maybe a quit button in a prominent place of the interface would be a good option.
There should be a pause feature but that could defeat the purpose of the game too. Something to think about.
Scoring system is easy to understand.
Not sure if same game could be applied to other learning material.

Group:Epicware (my group)

Andrew Chen - Apr 19, 2009 12:07:47 am

That’s What She Said

1. The interface is very clear and simple; no clutter, straightforward to use

2. Large buttons afford easy clicking

3. I like the Youtube style option buttons after a clip ends

4. The images of moving people along with the centered description of what’s happening was perhaps my favorite part of the interface

5. For the Telephone game, perhaps have a time/character count limit so that sentences would not be too long.

6. Since this game is very social, I would suggest having a user profile page with a friends list.

7. I suggest having a separate home page for each game after one of the three large game buttons are pressed, to separate information such as “top score” and “invite friends” from the game play itself. Since the game has a dynamic of moving forward clip after clip, I think less users would want to interrupt the flow to look at static information such as top scores. These pages are also opportunities for aesthetics.

8. The red background for “incorrect” might be slightly visually jarring.

9. I like the game idea a lot

Clyk

This was my group

WAAM!

1. The idea is good. I feel that the game play format is an very effective way to help memorization.

2. I like the thick lines and bold colors of the game play pages themselves. It has a good cartoonish adventure game feel.

3. Layout of the browsing page is quite clear

4. My first reaction is that I don’t see much difference between verse of the week and popular verses.

5. Color choice for the browsing pages and buttons should perhaps be reconsidered.

6. Having “Find a Verse,” “Play Game” and “Results” as tabs seems a little awkward, since these actions seem to follow each other. Having results appear at the end of game play

7. For the Results page, the orange background is a nice color choice, but not so much the green button. Perhaps consider eliminating the white boxes, and have the text fields line up.

8. Having a game home page might help.

9. Would voice recognition, multiple choice, or selecting from a pool of words be possible alternatives to typing?

10. For Top Scores, I’m not sure what the “Time” field means.

NGRS

1. I like the color scheme; however, the gray color on the top of the back ground is not very pleasant, especially with blood in mind.

2. Game play graphics were well-designed and attractive, such as the navigator window and the timer window, not to mention the red blood cell itself.

3. A better way to move the red blood cell is needed, especially since the blood vessels can be diagonal.

4. Is there a way to review the blood vessels you already went through or see a complete view of the circulatory system?

5. Perhaps having the names of the vessels move according to the position of the red blood cell might help, since the vessel names can be long.

6. Since the storyline is for the cell to get re-oxygenated, perhaps having an “oxygen gauge” would make it more exciting?

Epicware

1. I like the “listen -> type -> win” graphics; however, since it’s an attractive short overview of the instructions, perhaps having them at the top would be better. Also, the detailed instructions could be hidden behind a link, with the graphics doing the job on the main page.

2. If you are playing with someone and you change the difficulty level, what happens to your opponent?

3. I like the “Playing with” section of the video selection screen.

4. The video selection screen seems slightly cluttered, especially with so many buttons on the top.

5. The Buddy List interface looks like a file transfer interface rather than a buddy list interface.

Kevin Nakahara - Apr 19, 2009 04:43:49 pm

TWSS: - Interface is essentially complete. - Text is a little small, hard to read. - Implementation of telephone avatars communicating is impressive. - Color fade on main screen a little distracting. - Integration with video is seamless. - Answer button on top of video works for me.

Clyk - Green for quick play, red for play seems a little misleading to me. - Continue button is a little small. - Nice backgrounds, visually pleasing. - True/false headlines is a good way to go. - Main screen is a little bare to begin with. - Gameplay is logical.

Waam! -Color scheme a little cacophonous, consider using color brewer -Text, labels, fields unaligned, consider using Form items. -Gameplay layout is bright and straightforward -Buttons are big, easy to use. -Text is a good size. -Straightforward interface for straightforward game concept.

NGRS -Well-defined and relevant user group -Red background is consistent with game subject matter -Differing text sizes in menus for denoting labels, relevant text is a good idea -Dark text on dark background a little hard to read -Control reminders important -Having two methods for game control is a good way to make sure people stay entertained

Epicware -Considerable thought put into UI design (colors, concise labels, option grouping) -Black text hard to read on grey background. -Video thumbnail implementation is impressive, but there might be too many on the window at a given time -YouTube integration is seamless -Score update is in a good spot -Nice to have enter button mimic submit button

Aaron Hong - Apr 19, 2009 11:11:12 pm

Group:That's What She Said - This group has a pretty cool idea. I really like how they were able to integrate the video into their game. Minor detail is to change the default looking flex interface to one that is more consistent (where it is that way). Also when people record their answer for the telephone game, it might help for the "parsing" to just have them type it in. Good job!

Group:Clyk - Well prepared presentation with good examples to motivate point. They also had a funny demonstration, including a headline with "Jeff Nicholas." Pretty backgrounds for the game. How about a "Select all/Select none" button for selecting categories :D Pretty good all-in-all. I like the "Need Inspiration Button."

Group:WAAM! - My group.

Group:NGRS - Flash and flex integration problem... which we have too actually. Vessel navigator is a cool idea. Color scheme of pop-ups still need to be fixed. When you pop-up instructions, you need to have a "don't show me this again" checkbox. Cute graphics. Consider a different way of navigating (i.e. left-right arrow keys to orient and up key to go forward)?

Group:Epicware - Cool idea also, if you notice any trend, I like how groups have integrated video into their prototype. I think it is very useful also. Like someone said in class, there should be a button for "snippet is silent" or "noise" or "music." Registration successful text is hard to see. Like what someone else said, overlap snippets of video so in case a word is cut off.

Ian Hildreth - Apr 19, 2009 11:51:35 pm

Group:That's What She Said - Overall good presentation, I like the idea of a game to help you become more familiar with a language in a non-offensive way. Some things to think about: What about the quality of video and poor internet connections disturbing the quality of the videos? Also, what is the point of the telephone game? Do other people guess what you are saying? What if you want to play but you don't have a webcam? Does being able to see what the person is saying, not just hear it, give them an advantage? Also, points for ranking is good, but there needs to be some other aspect of competition. Also, you could switch the order of players in the telephone game. I would also like to see more feedback, such as an 'account created successfully' notification of some sort.

Group:Clyk - The interface is very nice; I like the logo, it is very appropriate. However, the game could be better if it all fit on one screen, and the player didn't have to slide left or right. On the gameplay screen, the buttons are really small and hard to read, make them bigger. The backgrounds are on point though. Why is there no negative scores? I get that the game is supposed to be positive, but it doesn't make sense to stop hurting someone's score when they reach zero, it doesn't seem fair. Also, there is no way to check if a person's entry is actually true or false. Maybe have a flag this user option, and ban their accounts for repeated abuse.

Group:WAAM! - Verse of the week is a very catchy idea. I also like the ability to have favorites that a person can save and view often. The gameplay screen looks really good, I liked the color choice. Also, the guy running across the screen is a good interface, I like how he is always moving. It made me think of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. The buttons in general are too small, they need to be bigger, and you are missing a quit button. You should be able to adjust how wuickly the words scroll by. The text contrast was also hard to see, green text on a yellow background is no good.

Group:NGRS - The color scheme is hard to see, pink and red clash too much to be clear. Also, the front screen was too small, it should take up more room so its easier to see. I like the confirmation of account screen. The buttons were the right size, but the text needs to be larger. I like the use of the mouse and keyboard, as well as an in-game menu. You should be able to turn off death from plaque. Moving diagonal doesn't seem like it works well, figure out a better way to do it. The red text on the main screen was annoying to read. Also, you shouldn't have to log in just to play.

Group:Epicware - The background was too dark to clearly see the black text. Also, i am confused as to how the score is updated, doesn't really seem like there is a fair accurate way to do it. I liked the top menu bar for easy navigation, as well as the confirmation of registration screen. The chat feature is also pretty neat. What was the 1 2 3 on the bottom of the screen? Was it a logo? also, what if it is in the middle of words, it needs some kind of logic to combine snippets together. Definitely skip over the silent portions of the video. There should also be a no text button.

Mark Dhillon - Apr 20, 2009 12:50:14 am

That's what she said

Interesting idea
Video clips are cool
Cool animations
Point is learning how to speak better...
Infrastructure needs are something to consider if you really want to make it.
This is highly original, I really like it

Clyk

News learner
How do you know if your sources are valid? What if articles get retracted?
Displaying running score would be cool
False headline idea is tight. I like that.

WAAM!

Bible game
Color scheme isn't so easy on the eyes for the main site
Kind of like Bible Mario teaches typing...
I think this is really well done, in that it it will accomplish your goal
Wtf does Bible vs rock mean?

NGRS

Learning vascular system game
Looks cool, color scheme is appropriate
Maybe a health bar would be better, especially if people touch the plaque...more forgiving
Going up at angles is wonky

Epicware

Deaf people videos
Cool idea, this is DOPE
How do you know what's right, or what portions to show?
Instructions screen looks shabby
Red letters for success, counterintuitive
If there's nothing for the time periods, it should have a skip button or nothing said button.
Is there a way to get the subtitles on the video?

Dwij Garg - Apr 20, 2009 12:55:53 am

Good instructions page on the first part of the game
Great concept of guessing languages and guessing accents
Give user a notification when the account is created so that he/she knows
Maybe add a social and chat aspect to the game, as it is based on telephones

An actual flash implementation!
Simple, yet fun and entertaining
Be more clear about difference between "Play" and "Quick Play" as users might inadvertently always use "Quick Play"
Could add multiple choice in addition to the true and false

Memorizing the Bible can be boring - good for churches, priests, catholic schools teaching students about the bible, as it provides an entertaining way of doing so
The "Suggest a Bible Verse" and "Verse of the Week" features are good for enthusiasts who want to know the Bible, but do not serve more than just a "game-play" purpose
The "Add Verse to Account" feature allows developer to keep track of popular verses, which are then displayed to the user
Multiple windows is a good idea
Nice random verse generator feature
Simple, but kind of boring and dry user interface
Maybe add a speed feature that allows users to choose the speed at which the words go by. Will make the game easier to play and understand
Great summary table at the end of the game

My Group!!

Very unique idea of turning caption creation for YouTube into a game
Kind of similar to word matching game - difference lies in the audio aspect
Great in-game chat feature for users
Global menu bar allows for easy navigation
Maybe use tabular views instead of a pull down menu - there will be less mouse clicks and more readability
Consistency in color
Add a "Repeat Audio" feature if users were not able to listen to the audio snippet in the first go

Szu-Chun Mao - Apr 20, 2009 01:57:48 am

Group:That's What She Said – My Group

Interactive way to learn news
It was a good idea to get the headlines from the Onion and Google.
I like the inspiration for creating false headlines.
The overall presentation is clear and easy to follow.
The 2-players mode is interesting where you get to compete with each other.
The background design looks great; however, the components’ displacements are too spread out.
The game does not seem to be very fun to play; perhaps you can add some more exciting game elements to it.

A game to memorize Bible verses.
The speaker did not make any eye contact to the audiences.
The overall presentation is too fast; a well-placed pause adds extra impact to your words.
This game feels more like a typing game and I don’t agree that typing can increase your muscle memory and help memorizing stuffs.
The animation during the gameplay looks great.
The components in the result screen are not lined up.
I did not see any way to quit the game during the gameplay in your presentation.

A game to learn the vascular system.
The visual aids used for the presentation looks professional.
I think the game goes too slow where it takes too much time to play the game in order to get any benefits as a pre-med student.
It’s hard to read the names of the upcoming veins when you are at the intersection.
It’s nice to have lots of control in the game settings.
It seems it’s too hard to control the character and not hit the wall.

It’s a great idea and the overall presentation is well-paced.
It’s better to use pictures to show the changes you made for the UI.
The overall UI design looks somewhat like a software application instead of a fun game to play.
It should have a separate button for blanks/silent.
It’s nice to get all these videos from Youtube, making it very interesting.

Gregory leshner - Apr 20, 2009 02:37:14 am

Group:That's What She Said - I really like your screen layouts and your color choices. When someone gets an incorrect answer, the correct answer should be given. I was a bit uncertain about how the telephone game worked when the player is not the first person in the chain. I imagine they have to type in what they actually said in addition to the video/audio recording. I think the game is a good way to get phoneme's with different accents. Nice job.

Group:Clyk - I really liked your game. I think guessing between 3 different headlines to find the correct one is fun. I also really liked that users could create false headlines to challenge other players. Your background artwork was great. The continue button after getting a correct or incorrect answer was a bit small and buried inside the scoring. Also on the game play pages, I would suggest moving the players current score into the upper right corner and making the Submit button larger.

Group:WAAM! - It would be nice to be able to review a users set of selected versus that are in your account. I think the information on your results page is great but spend a few minutes doing some basic layout, like centering the title and aligning results if possible. I liked bible vs fire as a name better. Is there a biblical reference for the rock that now claims your life if you fail your verse?

Group:NGRS - Creating a maze of human vascular system is a great game idea. Obviously this only applies to a niche market, but its well designed for those users. As was pointed out in class the movement of celly though the body is really clunky, but I am sure you will fix that. I found it difficult to read the next vein names at a junction as often much of the name is off the screen. Your pop up menus and input screens were really well designed and easy to read.

Group:Epicware - My biggest issue with your game is the scoring. Since there are millions of videos there is a high probability that a player or team of players may be the first to transcribe a video. As such how do you determine if they have typed the correct words? Are a team of players supposed to correct each others answers to each snippet, and if so, when does that happen? How is difficulty determined? If these are being pulled off of youtube on the fly, what criteria is used to determine difficulty? On the video selection screens that include the youtube videos, I found that having two rows of tabs, one your game's high level tabs and the other you tube associated tabs confusing and crowded.

Shendy Kurnia - Apr 20, 2009 04:40:02 am

The idea is great and it makes it a gwap
It is good to have multiple ways to submit the guess in the telephone game

"Need to register?" does not look like a button
The button "Continue" overlaps with button "True" on some of the questions which can make player accidentally click "True" for the next question
The options "Quick Play" and "Custom Play" confused me; I think "Custom Play" should be "Options"

The theme and layout for each screen is different
Text is hard to see. Maybe it should have a color more contrast to the background
Bible verses that pop up can overlap with each other, which make user think they are one pop up window

Like the taxi analogy
During the game, there should be a better interface to get to the main menu
The tips pop-up is not good for expert players

Presentation is a bit too long. Could have presented the demo at first
Pretty cool organized interface
Scoring is a little bit vague

Adit Dalvi - Apr 20, 2009 06:19:06 am

Loved the idea – extremely useful
Need feedback for registration
Validation is necessary and expected, not something to show
Inconsistent button sizes
Maybe add a help screen for newbies

Nice quick-play button option ... loved it
Better random headline generator algorithm needed
Need a better color scheme
Inconsistent button sizes

I don’t know anything about the Bible (and I’ll keep my views to myself), but this is more of a typing speed game than anything according to me
No pause feature … which is excusable, but maybe have some way of detecting no movement from the user and not kill him off continuously?
Need background of verses, otherwise they’re just random paragraphs right?
Bad color scheme, didn’t like it at all

LOVED the character and plot utilization … definitely gives the game an edge
Health bar and/or some form of “timer”
Pop-ups are annoying after a while … maybe put a check box that says something like “Stop showing me pop-ups”.
How do I navigate diagonal paths easily?
Change settings initially on starting the game … like an Options menu.

Awesome idea … very nicely based off the ESP game!
Have the buttons somewhere other than at the top? Or is this a Mac thing where the bar thing is at the bottom?
I don’t see how the buddy list is really relevant.
Do you do simple matching of text or something more complicated? What if the users got it pretty much right, except that one of them didn’t spell some word correctly?
What about people who always agree to type “foobar” everytime? Any way to catch this?

Victor Lum - Apr 20, 2009 07:03:55 am

Group That's What She Said: Learning accents and languages could be very useful. Many gameplay modes keep it varied. Using all those videos was cool, although your telephone game seems like it requires people to have webcams. Interface looks clean and simple.

Group Clyk: My, what a good-looking group.

Group WAAM!: This is a cool way to learn Bible verses, but it seems like it's more about typing than memorizing. Maybe you guys could have adjustable speeds for people who don't type as fast (or maybe get rid of typing altogether). Also, you should probably give more time to longer words. There doesn't seem to be a way to just browse for a certain verse that you like; you have to get lucky with the random verse.

Group NGRS: This is definitely a better way to learn the vascular system than just trying to memorize it. You guys probably should have demoed your game before going into detail about it (I found myself wondering about what you were talking about). Navigating through diagonal parts can be tough with just up, down, left, right, especially with 1-hit death, so maybe you should try to make movement easier or redesign your mazes.

Group Epicware: Captioning videos is a useful thing, but honestly, your game doesn't seem very fun. Maybe you could add something to make it seem more game-like (although I'm not sure what that would be). Plus I'm not sure how your scoring works. If it's based on how similar it is to other people's responses, what if everyone got it wrong? And how are you going to deal with stopping mid-word, should it count in this frame, or the next?

Sum Sum Wong - Apr 20, 2009 09:42:29 am

TWSS

You can add a screen to say that the account is successfully created.
The presentation is quite clear.
The words are sometimes too small to read.
Idea of the game is really good.

Clyk

Login is too to the right side. It looked very unimportant over there.
Submit button in the game screen is too small.
Maybe a difficulty level system. If the player get the 10pt question right, then go to 20pt questions, etc.
Nice presentation.

WAAM!

Nice presentation, very enthusiastic presenter.
The blue(aqua?) color is a bit too dazzling for me.
Creative choice of problem.
The current word you are typing is in black color, which is too close to the blue background. The word can be made larger and have stronger contrast with background.

NGRS

I like the interface of this game.
Why the "game setting" pop-up has red background and other pop-ups has gray background?
The color scheme is nice.
Maybe it is hard to control the cell to move on the inclines.

Epicware

Interesting game idea.
What to do when the video stopped in middle of a word?
What if there is a long silence in the video?
The buddy list does not look very attractive
The background color of "Let's play" button is weird.
Overall a nice presentation

Chris Thompson - Apr 20, 2009 10:52:39 am

Group:That's What She Said - Interesting idea for a project; seems like a valuable service if it were to catch on. Is having an account really necessary? Also, the video identifications are productive but not exactly fun... what if all of the phrases were required to be jokes, in whatever language? Then, at least if you knew the language, you'd get a little more satisfaction out of it.

Group:Clyk - Good looking website integration, and I'm glad to hear that accounts are optional (stat tracking is nice, but fun needs to be the motivating feature for a game). However, quizzing somebody on a topic promotes them becoming an expert in it, and I don't know that many people who want to be experts in news trivia or random factoids. I just don't know how many people would be motivated to be quizzed on something that they didn't really care much about (but man do the background images look nice). This is more a comment about the news game style in general, but the whole reason people read the news is to learn something they didn't know. So the point of a news game is to... quiz people on things they don't know. That's just guesswork.

Group:WAAM! - Heh, nice project name. The colors are very... faded. That's not so much an issue, but the thin text on white background is a bit offputting. Web design asside, very good game system for memorization. Motivating, and substantive. Also, as a whole, I think it's a much better idea to have a memorization game based on something like the bible as opposed to news; there are plenty of people who want to become experts on the bible, but not too many people (that I know of) who want to be an expert on random event trivia. Very, very good game design. Lots of good statistics -- just a very good project overall.

Group:NGRS - Good target audience -- specific and motivated people. Creative premise -- believable, and informative. (Also, impressive amount of functionality for Flex.) But the Plaque-deaths seem annoying and counter-productive. Also, the ability to move diagnally would be very useful. Also, the names (which are important to know) don't always become visible until after the user is partway/all the way down the path. Oh, and I see the reasoning behind the choice (now), but I've always wondered about that group name. Have you tried pronouncing it aloud?

Group:Epicware - There seem to be too many videos to find a partner on. If you're going to allow the user to pick the video, you'd have to have twice as many subtitlers as there are popular videos for everyone to generally find partners, and that won't happen. Also, although it seems like a good idea to allow you to pick who to collaborate with, the only way I could see this being fun with a friend is if we agree to sabotage a film -- planning a fake script in advance, or over the phone. I think that's why the other input agreement games work -- you don't know who you're paired up with.

Salman Rahman - Apr 20, 2009 10:41:18 am

Great PPT
Clear speaker
Good problem description - but is your target group too broad?
This game looks fun!!
Good revisions from low-fi

Things to improve:

Can you implement a chat function during telephone like after the round or something - add more social dynamic to the game
Make sure that people get switched position-wise during the telephone game because it would suck to always be at the beginning

Fun game - interesting UI
Good speakers
Enjoyed the interactive nature of the presentation

Things to improve:

False headline is tight - but how to ensure someone doesn't drop a real headline to doubly trick the guy... implement a flagging option?

Really easy to see / use UI for verse picking
Implemented changes from low-fi were great

Things to improve:

Removing random words might not be a great idea because removing easy words vs. hard words is an issue
It was kind of hard for me to understand what the running guy was doing and how you input the words and stuff - maybe because I was sitting in the back or maybe you didn't explain it clearly
This game seems to be testing your typing ability as much as your knowledge of bible verses ...

Group:NGRS - That's me

This is a pretty cool idea
UI seems easy to use but that it took a lonnngg time - good work!

Things to improve:

Login and register is kind of out of the way and not easily seen at first
How will you check for spelling tolerance?
What if it pauses midword? Rewind by a little?
Implement a score

Colin Downs-Razouk - Apr 20, 2009 11:48:49 am

TWSS

Your interface looks really nice and polished. If you could somehow have both the “Guess” options and the “Play again” option on the screen at the same time, you could save users an extra click to decide wether to guess or play again. (or they might decide to guess, but when they see the answers, they don’t see the one they thought it was, so they will want to “Play Again”) I also think “Replay” or “Replay Clip” would be better than “Play Again”. Your game requires a lot of explanation, so it might be a good idea to have some sort of tutorial for each game.

Clyk

The cloudy background of your screens makes your interface pretty. I brought this up in class, but you might want to be able to tell if you user is cheating (by using true headlines and saying that they are false.) Also, the gameflow of your multiplayer game wasn’t clear. Was it fully functional? Also, your main page is pretty nice, but it looks more like a travel website than a game.

WAAM!

I like your game idea, it’s really creative. In terms of your interface, light green text is never a really good idea. The first level of your game seems a little unnecessary, it just seems like a typing game. The game does emphasize typing a lot. Maybe you guys could have another game mode where you read a verse, and you have to select who said it and the numbers that go with it. The results screen seems really useful and well designed. In terms of the gameplay itself, maybe if the stick figure would fall on the rocks when he went too far to the left and lost (or maybe the word cubes could disappear when they hit the left side of the screen). Also, the typed words in the top box are pretty small, and the blue text is hard to see over the blue sky.

NGRS

In terms of your presentation, you don’t need to explain as much as you did. We just want to see the interface. Moving around seems pretty difficult. Maybe you should make the veins bigger? Also, if you lose, you should probably not go back to the start, and you should not have to log in again (I suppose that is just not implemented). Like Prof. Agrawala said, you should cut down on the annoyances of the user. They should probably not have to see the settings screen unless they choose to change the default settings, and seeing the instructions should be an option.

Epicware

A lot of people have this problem (even my group), but you should go over your interface while we are looking at the demo, or afterwards. The register button should probably not be hidden in black text on blue background in the upper right hand corner. Also you shouldn’t have the rankings and profile buttons on every page (especially the login and create account page). The buddy list is a bit confusing. If you have a request, it would be a little annoying if you have to go find it in the from folder. The gameplay seems pretty nice. Agrawala is right though, it wasn’t wizard of oz. I think Agrawala is going go crazy at the next person who messes that up.

Eric Hernandez - Apr 21, 2009 08:05:56 am

The interface is simple with little if any ambiguity that could occur.
I've tried rather hard to find a problem with your interface, but it's simply that good.

I could be wrong, but it looks like you assumed that the users will have a large display monitor when playing the game. Does it scale down nicely for small displays?
Is it necessary to be logged in to play? It would be nice to be able to play as a guest.
It would be cool if there were mini-games that dive further into a headline, instead of just reading about headlines.
Interface looks great! I don't think many people could get confused playing this.

It looks like there is still a lot of work to do with the gameplay (although I can't blame you).
Your color scheme almost seems like it could work, except a revision that takes contrast into account would'nt hurt.
It would be really cool if you could use this for a more general class of memorization problems, rather than just biblical verses.
There doesn't seem to be a diffulty setting for how fast a user must type; this may disenfranchise users who are slow at typing but good at memorizing.

Your use of pop-up menus seems to slow down the user a lot. Our team only uses them to let the user confirm that they are doing something that may be very very bad (either for us or them). They also always have the choice to cancel.
In your controls menu, many users may not know what "Use W-A-S-D" means. It may be more useful to use a picture of the button set so that there will be little chance of confusion, especially since you have the space to put such pictures.
How well does your app scale down to, say, 800 X 600 displays?
There is a KeyBoard class in Actionscript that has constants representing the buttons pressed, you could add an event handler that checks to see if a user is holding up and right for example, then have the cell move diagonally instead of shimmying right and up.