Norman's Design Principles

In the following, we want to show how
Norman's design priniples affected our design process:

1. Visibility

Our design does not include any hidden menus, therefore granting a good degree of visibility. Furthermore, the action of pressing any button in our application will be made easily understandable by implementing a progress bar filling up while the user has to keep the selection.

2. Feedback

Our application includes various sounds to give an audible feedback to the user. In addition to that the game state is displayed as a score panel at the top of each player's screen.

3. Constraints

The users are restricted to move their pad only in their respective play area.
Another constraint is realized in the fact that a potential second player needs the agreement of the first player to join the game, so no one can interfere negatively with a player's game.

4. Mapping

Pong itself is perfectly mapped from the real world version of the game.
Also, mapping is given by the implementation of each player's UI elements in a single color for each player.

5. Consistency

Throughout the application we only use a single kind of button or interactivity, therefore consistency is given.

6. Affordance

As mentioned above, a progress bar for each button will be implemented to ensure a high degree of affordance. This is in accordance to EyeToy and similar environments, so experienced users have very easy access to our application and do not have to relearn the controls.

task done by: Benedikt

Screenshots of Prototype

Lo-Fi Prototyping OUTTAKES

Here are some funny stuff from the video shooting.  Hope you enjoy it :)

Modified Paper Prototype

Task done by: all

List of Changes and Modifications

As a result of our user-test, we have decided to apply the following changes to our 4 application screens of "Pong".

In addition to the silhouettes in the start screen, a small notice will be displayed which describes what our game is, and how to start a new game. In the background of the same screen, will show a demo of the game so that the passengers know how our game will look like in action.

The main menu screen will be modified in such a manner that the game mode is no longer be chosen by holding a hand over the corresponding button for a pre-defined time period. In order to start a game, the user must first select a button by holding her hand over the button. This will cause for the button to change its color from white to blue and in addition, a Start button will appear. Now if the user holds her hand over the start button for some time, than the game will start in the desired mode. This way of interaction, allows for the user to only require one hand for starting the game.

In the gaming screen, an exit button has replaced the game mode information. Using this button, the user can exit the game and return to the main menu screen at any time during a running game. Also, the current score of each player is displayed as "current score/maximum score". This informs the users how many points they have to score in order to win a game.

Now, there exists a high score board for all of the single player modes of the game. Depending on the mode, in which the game was played a score board containing the highest score for that specific mode is displayed. An "Enter" button is also added to the keyboard. This buttons appears as soon as the first letter has been typed. This allows the user to enter a character sequence with a maximum length of 3 and a minimum length of 1. After the user has entered her name, the ranking screen will be shown for a few seconds, after that the main menu will be shown. If no interaction with the screen is registered for some time, than the start screen will be displayed.

In general, the screen will be made fancier and more appealing than the original simple screens. As an effort in this direction, we have added stars to the high score board.

Task done by: Bianca, Hoang

Summary of Observations and Feedback

Due to the results of the user test, most interactions of our pong prototype are intuitive. At the beginning of each test, the user had some problems in “simulating” the interaction with the display by the Kinect. But during the process, they got used to it.

When the test started, it wasn’t clear for one of the users, what the game was going to be like. S/he suggested having a demo of the game shown, so that passengers get an idea of what the game looks like.

As we came to the menu-screen, one user said that s/he would like to have a start button instead of activating the button by hovering over it for some time.

Although the gameplay itself is intuitive, one of the users stated that it was unclear when the game will end or how long s/he has to play the game in order to win. Therefore, s/he wanted to see how many points s/he has to score to win, or the remaining time of the game. Also during gameplay, one user wished to have a restart or exit button, so that new arrived users can quickly start a new game instead of waiting for the game to end.

In the highscore screen the users found it hard to use a keyboard without an “enter”-button. One of them had the intention of just typing one letter instead of three for her/his name.

After typing the letters, we had idea to switch back to the menu-screen automatically after approx. 3 to 5 seconds, so that a new game could start. Both users welcomed this idea. An idea was to put more fancy images into the record-screen.



Task done by: The Hieu, Leily

Low Fidelity Test

Task done by: all