Our goals for week 9 were to: keep user testing and try to schedule sessions, schedule times to meet with our mentors, finalize illustration designs and work on cover pages, create more circuits, work on adding additional pull tabs, rework some of our page designs to include more complicated popups based on some of The Color Monster popups, and start building out the final book.
We tried to visit the library to find more children to test our project on, but we were told by a librarian that we needed to schedule a session to come in and conduct user tests. Included below is the email request that we sent them; we still haven't heard back yet. From the one child we were able to hear from, they confirmed that the circuit incorporated with the popup made the page better than just a regular popup or even just a paper-based interaction such as pull tabs in the garden scene. We're considering making copies of our current pages and sending them to be handled by children out of state because we haven't been able to receive as much user feedback as we have wanted.
In terms of Mentor reviews, we will be meeting with Ruhan on Friday. We still need to reach out to Chris, but I don't see this being an issue. In addition, we have a teacher that has taught 4th grade (within in our age range), and I reached out to her; she would love to give feedback on our project. The only issue is that she is out of state, so we were considering mailing her some of our pages before we have our meeting with her.
For circuits, we experimented with using conductive ink instead of conductive tape. It seemed to work okay, but it was tricky to get a secure connection as it involved having to draw a thick line without any scratchiness or gaps. Although nylon tape seems to be more reliable, this is a circuit-building method we may incorporate in our final book for more tricky connections.
For popups, we made another popup page with a playground scene. From previous user tests, this 2D-illustration-to-3D-popup style has been really appealing to children of our age group, so we decided we will be keeping it for our final design with its simplicity. In addition, we also recreated one of our previous pages; as seen below, we added in a "scrolling" effect to Willie's phone to provide further interaction. While we would like to create more complicated popups, we have decided that this is not necessary to our project and that we will only be deviating from our popup style if we have extra time.
For illustrations, I created the playground this week as well as a few different cover book options. For the playground I debated whether or not to use real string for the tire swings; from testing I found that the string wasn't as visually appealing, so I decided it would be best not to use real string for the tire swings. For the cover, I decided it would be best to create a few different versions so that we didn't settle on one idea immediately. For our next user tests, I plan to ask our users which cover they like the best and go from there.
