Week 3: Survey Results

Monday 14th February 2022

WEEK 3 -

TO DO: CREATE SURVEY AND GATHER RESPONSES

PLAN

Today we have started the week with our usual weekly discussion and plan around what we will be working on in the upcoming days. When we recreated our schedule, we discussed our roles and responsibilities in the team and spoke about my interest in Art Lead/Director. Because of this, I have taken it upon myself to plan the visual design/art direction for our game. To start this, I have scheduled in the creation of a survey to gather results from our target audience and conclude on the subject matter/theme for our games environment. During Week 2, Kiera and I discussed our ideas and came to the conclusion that a natural environment would be best for what we are trying to achieve, therefore, I will provide my peers with options for this and the information needed to understand the basis of our game.

WHERE DO I BEGIN?

To begin, I will be outlining exactly what I need to find out and form this into a series of questions which I can use to gather feedback from potential users. We established our target audience to be students during Phase 3 of Semester 1 and luckily we are surrounded by them! Once I have this survey I plan to send it out to as many of my peers as possible via Slack and other social media.

SURVEY

What do I need to find out?

This survey should give us a clear idea of the kind of environments people are most interested in from a small range. My Survey last Semester gave me a greater understanding of what kind of things people found most calming, and this survey is a more refined version of these responses - a way to collect final design decisions, but allowing our users to take the lead. It'll also be necessary to gather a vote regarding the art style we progress with. (Can be tested and changed later on!) To finalise, I'd also like to know a little about our users and how useful they'll find an experience like ours.

WHERE DO I BEGIN?

QUESTIONS TO ASK OUR AUDIENCE:

'Getaway' - Provide draft pitch for the game. How much does our game interest you?
"The space will be tailored to encourage emotional and physical regulation, to help reduce sensations of anxiety and stress through visuals and sound". How does this sound to you?
Which environment would you find most calming in a 360 degree environment? - Provide options.
Does the art style fo the room matter to you?
Which art style do you prefer? - Provide options.
Is colour important to you? - Why?

THE SURVEY

"Getaway: Research Survey"

Purpose for Survey

To gather responses from our target audience regarding the effectiveness of our space and environment and art style preferences to take forward for design and development.

SURVEY RESPONSES & EVALUATION

15th February

SURVEY LINK:

https://forms.gle/rfTjU2yGwy45R4Vp7

NUMBER OF RESPONSES:

RESPONSES

1. An interactive immersive physical space on campus. Does this interest you?

91.7% of responses responded yes to this question! The majority of our target audience are interested in our experience.

2. The space will be tailored to encourage emotional and physical regulation, to help reduce sensations of anxiety and stress through visuals and sound. How does this sound?

87.5% of people said the game idea sounds great to them, however, 12.5% of responses were unsure. This may be because people do not know what to expect and therefore cannot make an assumption yet. This is a much better result than 'no i wouldn't find this useful'!.

RESPONSES

3. The physical space will consist of a 360 degree virtual display. Which of the environment options below would you find most calming?

After providing the audience with 4 environment types, there was a clear winner! 37.5% of our audience said they would find a mountainscape environment most calming, 29.2% liked the idea of heavy rainfall indoors and 25% preferred a late night/sunset/drive setting.

RESPONSES

4. Does the art style of the space matter to you? If Yes/No, please elaborate.

7 people responded no to this question and agreed that the sound will be the most important aspect of the room. 10 people responded yes to this question, and elaborated that a colourful style would be more visually pleasing.

It was also noted that different people can be affected by different styles/colours, which may or may not help people cope with anxiety. All based on preference.

RESPONSES

5. Which art style do you prefer the most? (Drop down images)

It was very close between both abstract imagery and hand-drawn illustrations. Hand-drawn received 33.3% of votes whereas Abstract Imagery received 37.5%. Vector Art followed closely behind with 29.2% of votes. This was a very close vote and I feel it will be up to testing that'll eventually decide this.

6. Would colour be important to you in the space?

14 people agreed that colour would be important within the space/environment, some of which said it would make the experience more realistic. I believe this depends on the theme we choose and how everything else works around it. Some people find more muted colours more relaxing and visually interesting and said to avoid too many bright or dark colours - prevent conveying the wrong message. Someone also commented on how different colours can depict different moods - which we learned from our research last Semester. On the other hand, 3 people responded no to this, and said music/sound is the most important aspect to them.

EVALUATION & REFLECTION

DOES OUR GAME INTEREST OUR TARGET AUDIENCE?

91.7% of responses said yes! Thankfully, the majority of our target audience are interested in our game and also said they'd find our experience useful during times of distress and overwhelm. A minority of responses agreed that they were unsure which I am sure we can convince once we have a more in depth demonstration of gameplay! Overall, this was a great response and I am hopeful knowing our game will be appreciated by many!

THE CHOSEN THEME

The votes between themes were fairly close but one stood out the most. Mountainscape! Kiera and I have had multiple discussions regarding this theme and said if it were up to us, we'd certainly go through with this and our audience agrees! There must be something about mountains that give people a sense of calm and provide them with the means to escape. This'll be a fun theme to explore and research further to find hidden gems and intricate details which we can include in the environment. Kiera and I have both decided this will be the most effective choice for environment within our space and I am looking forward to researching different locations for visual research and inspiration. An idea could also be to include the small details like moving cable cars and skiers too.

THE ART STYLE

The art style of this environment can be experimented with however, the vote was close between hand-drawn illustration and abstract imagery. For our chosen theme, a hand-drawn style would work much better and in terms of our skill sets, this is much more doable. We don't have a lot of time to begin learning new skills at this stage (in Adobe After Effects) so the most reasonable decision we feel would be a 2D hand-drawn style. In addition to this, I asked our peers whether or not colour mattered within the space, and around 90% of people agreed it did. In the upcoming weeks, this is something we should experiment with and test the effectiveness of, to evaluate whether or not the appearance of our visuals have an effect on both physical and emotional regulation.

How will we measure this? TESTING!

We had plans to use a cheap 'fitbit' or heart rate monitor to measure the decrease in heart rate and evaluate whether or not our players are feeling calm or if our experience had no effect at all! We will also ask our testers questions regarding how they feel before and after the experience.

NEXT STEPS

While Kiera works on prototyping the main player interaction in a VR space, I'll be spending the remainder of this week researching into our final theme for the space and progressing with the visual design. This should give us better insight into what our environment might look like and the assets we will have to create. Yesterday I emailed both Andy Brook and Chris O'Connor, so we are now waiting for a response regarding technicalities and limitations which can be found documented here: Box Enquiries.

TRELLO - UPDATED TO DO LIST

https://trello.com/invite/b/XQyFGSIT/821d9c2572f15025b306d2268f14624a/getaway-project-management