March 15, 1998

Group Meetings

The group met today to review of progress, make plans for the coming two weeks and discuss feedback we had received from out storyboard presentation, which was given last Thursday. As a part of the presentation, each member of the audience was asked to give us feedback on what they like regarding the design of the game thusfar, and what they considered problematic, or suggestions they had. The following is a list of constructive criticism or suggestions paraphrased from feedback we received:

• Is the level of wording too difficult for first graders?
• How much wording are you using, in lieu of graphics. Maybe you should use more graphics as they are easier to understand than words.
• Could you relate your theme of a haunted house to money in some way? They seem rather disconnected right now. Perhaps you could make it so that in each room the player enters, she receives a certain amount of money. After going through a prescribed number of rooms, the player can now "buy" the freedom of an entrapped ghost.
• Could the players skip the tutorial, or at least have the option to do so?
• Some people thought that some sort of picture in a corner might show where the player was in the haunted house. This would show how far the player had come, what route the had taken (probably made up as there is not real route through the "maze") and how far they need to go. It was suggested that this method would provide incentive and show a sense of progress.
• Could you use more sound in you interface?
• The size of coins should be accurate with respect to each other.
• Instead of using phrases such as "which contains more money", or "which one is different", could you use phrases which might be more familiar to first graders, such as "which of these things is not like the others" (which comes from the show Sesame Street). Can first graders differentiate between the statement "more money" meaning more coins, as opposed to more value?
• Are some of your colors or graphics offensive to people with a religious background? For example, there is a great deal of black and red in the introduction, which are strong colors with connotations to some. And ghosts could be misconstrued, especially in the context of a catholic school. Also, phrases like "meet your doom" (which is used at present in our introduction) may not be appropriate.
• Maybe you should use lower intensity games, such as picking one penny out of a pallet of many coins, of which only one is a penny.

We discussed many of these concepts. Many of them we would like to implement if we have time, such as the incorporation of lower intensity games. We have also decided to work on incorporating money into the haunted house theme more, and also to implement more sounds.

We are consulting the teachers on issues such as the level of difficulty of english used in the program, and the fact that some phrases, colors or graphics we have at present might be offensive, especially in the context of a religious school. For example, it was suggested that first graders might begin to associate Casper the friendly ghost with the holy spirit, or other "ghost" figures in the catholic church. We had not even considered this potential, as both the teachers and all her students seemed extremely excited about the haunted house theme.

We have decided at present not to use a navigational map. We are unsure as to the pedagogical value of this device, and we think that the programming involved would be extensive. We will put in on our "wish list" of things to do given time.

We would like to do a great deal of testing in this project, in order to record student responses to theme, game organization, toughness and applicability of our puzzles, and interfaces aspects (especially) and to adjust the program as necessary. We constructed a rough timeline and are hoping to have the program ready for classroom testing by April 7^th.