Week Fourteen was a week of seeking out and implementing our final feedback.
Monday was Soft Opening, a chance for faculty to come around to student products before they’re formalized and offer final pieces of advice. The team had the opportunity to demo our experience six times for different groups of faculty, and receive feedback on topics ranging from our writing, to lights implementation, and overall experience design.
Feedback on our physical design was positive, with comments about how the built table and lights greatly added to the experience. We did receive critique that the meaning of our lighting was not quite clear enough. Our scripted content was the subject of most of our criticism. The robotic delivery of the voice, due to the fact that Lenovo tablet does not support dialogue altering SSML, was not allowing for our jokes to land, and was actively working against us. Because of this, faculty let us know that they were having issues engaging with the experience.
The feedback from Monday shaped how shaped our final week of design. Programming and Design made a solid push to clarify lights. The script was shortened by a full question, and our dialogue issue was discussed with the Google team. Even though the software that we had been working with did not have the capability to address the issue, they worked with us to find a fix. Using the Google team as points of contact, they were able to develop audio for us using internal experimental software. While it was not a perfect fix, it has gone a good ways towards addressing issues with the speech.
On Wednesday, we checked in with the client to make sure we could implement Softs notes in ways they found agreeable, and on Friday, we had our final call. As we continue to polish towards our final delivery, we can breathe a little easier knowing the client is happy with out work.
We’re in the home stretch, and still need to finish strong. Next week, we take the experience public at the the ETC’s Fall Festival, and the week after, we present at Finals for the collected body of the ETC. It’s been a long semester, but we’ve got things to show and be proud of.
