Assignment 5 Report

KIT724 Assignment 4 & 5 Group 6 - VR » Devlog

2 years ago by xzheng13

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1. Introduction / Overview

Compared to assignment 4, we have added a new feature. The guide will follow the player to move.

Elevator Pitch

Would you like to visit the well-known heritage of Australia's heart-shaped island written in stone and brick at home? Welcome to the Port Arthur VR project, where you can visit the prison's historical sites, and participate in card games, sailboats, and there will be a personal guide for you.

2. Technical Development

2.1.Distance grabs the pokers.

This function uses a script from tutorials which can make player use the trigger of Oculus device to grab things, and we use it on pokers. This function is connected with the second function.

2.2.Press button and text will show.

To show a more realistic effect, player needs to use the first function which is grabbing a poker and find the corresponding button and select the correct card to get the character story. When player press button, the text will rise from the ground slowly and player will get the information.

2.3.Boarding the ship.

With this script, after player press a button near the ship, player can board on the ship to see the view. Player can use the thumb controller to look around, but they cannot move when they are on the ship.

2.4.Listening to the introduction of Port Arthur

Users can walk up to the front desk and hear the staff talk about the history of Port Arthur.

2.5.The tour guide follows the user throughout the tour.

After the user plays the card matching game, the user can find the guide waiting outdoors and approach him to a certain distance, and he will follow the user throughout the game.

3. 3D Content

Some of these 3D models reproduce Port Arthur's most important buildings and scenes, while others show interactive elements.

Visitor centre service man

This is the service man of the visitor centre. When the player walks into the visitor centre, the player will hear his voice introduction at the front desk. Then he will follow the player all the way.

Attraction buildings

These buildings reproduce the various cottages and houses in Port Arthur.

Prison

The prison recreates the dark side of Port Arthur, showing the environment in which prisoners lived, allowing visitors to relive the dark side of the prison and the miserable life of prisoners.

Church

The church is one of Port Arthur's famous buildings and represents the important role of religion in the reform of criminals.

Pier and Castle

Recreating the ship terminal of Port Arthur and the port buildings of the year. Players need to take a ship from this dock.

Boat and button

The boat browsing project in Port Arthur uses the boat with the blue box on the right in the picture above, when the player touches the blue button on the dock and it can sail.

Visitor Centre & Cards

Port Arthur's visitor centre with staff and cards. There will be a broadcast when the player gets into visitor centre. The cards on the table can be picked up.

Button for card story

When the player has finished taking the cards, he or she can look for the same card in the pillar outside the visitor centre. Then press the blue button, and the card story will slowly rise on the ground behind the pillar with the card.

Trees and the environment

Port Arthur is located in a natural scenic area, and these natural landforms, trees, grasses and shrubs well reflect the characteristics of natural scenic spots.

Sign for the entrance

Signage for the entrance of the large building in Port Arthur.

Cemetery

The Isle of the Dead Cemetery buried more than 1,000 criminals, military and civilian personnel, women and children between 1833 and 1877.

Brick House

The brick house is a reproduction of the officer's quarters, which were the dormitories of the soldiers at that time.

Abandoned buildings

The abandoned building represents the hospital in Port Arthur, which rescued many convicts with respiratory and rheumatic ailments at the time.

Castle

The castle is a recreation of Port Arthur's guard tower and is a well-known attraction.

4. Usability Testing

4.1.Design and Plan

This application was designed to help promote the attraction of Port Arthur, Tasmania. Some of the mini games that could be enjoyed in Port Arthur could also be presented in the application. The scenes in this app are highly recreated from the real Port Arthur. Therefore, the purpose of the usability test was to test whether people would want to visit Port Arthur after using the application. For this usability test, two aspects will be taken into account, the realism of the scene and the fun of interaction.

In this application, there are many interactive features that participants need to manipulate to see if the application is complete and successful in terms of interaction. The following are some of the goals that participants are required to complete while using the application:

· Listen to the staff’s explanation about Port Arthur.

· Use the card that participants chose to find the corresponding stories.

· The guide accompanies participants throughout the tour.

· Have a boat tour.

All goals are divided into small tasks that help participants spend less time in triggering these features while using the application (Image 1, Image 2, Image 3 & Image 4).

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

And creating a persona is also necessary for usability testing. This allows the participants to really consider the strengths and weaknesses of the application from the perspective of the target users and thus improve it more effectively. Image 5 shows a persona representing the target user.

Image 5

Afterwards, participants were asked to put themselves into the role and complete the following questionnaire (Image 6) after completing the four tasks mentioned above.

Image 6

4.2.Recruitment

Four people were recruited for this test, and the recruitment criteria was for people who were interested in virtual reality technology or who wanted to visit Port Arthur.

The recruitment plan was firstly for the developers to find out if there were any eligible people around them, including friends and family, and if the developers didn't find anyone suitable in between, then an open call was made on the internet, and luckily for the developers, there were eligible people around developers.

4.3.Protocol of the testing

This test is a face-to-face test at the Law Library Group Study Room. Before this test, we will briefly introduce the application of Port Arthur to the testers. For example, how to hear the audio introduction of Port Arthur at the visitor centre, how to pick up the card at the visitor centre, how to view the card story and how to take a boat tour of Port Arthur. Then, the tester can wear the VR equipment to experience the Port Arthur application. The test procedure for each tester is 10 minutes.

After the test, the tested person will fill out a questionnaire. The questions of the questionnaire are mainly based on the authenticity of the scene and the fun of interaction, to collect other comments and opinions from the participants.

4.4.Report of the findings

Below are the results of the questionnaire survey for the four participants.

4.5.Analyses of the findings

In terms of the scoring section of the four questionnaires, the average scores for these questions were 4/5, 4.25/5, 3.5/5, 3.25/5, 4/5, 2/5, 2/5, 3.5/5, 4.75/5, 4.75/5. Since everyone has different tendencies and preferences for different features and scenery, the criteria for each question were set at 3/5 to determine participants' perceptions of the effectiveness of each feature and how much they liked the scenery. It could be seen that for the tour guide function this feature is the least favored by the participants.

For the short answer section of the questionnaire, overall, the advantage of this application is its ease of operation. This means that this application is friendly for most age groups. Nevertheless, the questionnaire found that the participants' evaluation of the boat ride experience was more news. Once the button is pressed, the player cannot move around on the boat and the scenes are not displayed smoothly enough during the boat ride, which does not match with real life.Participants also pointed out shortcomings in the scenery, saying that the buildings in the scenery were too low pixelated and not realistic, and that they also appeared to go through walls. More than one volunteer felt that the map was too large and the buildings were too few, probably because the app had not been fully developed to have the same scale as reality, and that it took too long to walk around the app and there was a lot of repetition in the scenery.

5. Addressing the Results of the Usability Testing

5.1.Detail a plan to address the user feedback

Based on the results of our usability testing, we have developed the following plan which has four steps to address user feedback over the coming week.

1. Since the tour guide function is the least favorited part of the participants, the tour guide will only stay in the visitor centre in the later stage and will not follow the players on the tour.

2. For the boat ride experience where once the button is pressed, the player will not be able to move on the boat, it is planned to change. When players arrive on the other side by boat, they can disembark and visit the buildings and cemeteries on the other side.

3. For the problem that the pixelation of the buildings in the scene is too low, more realistic buildings will be produced in the later stage and strive to restore all the building prototypes in Port Arthur.

4. For the problem that the map is too large and the buildings are too few, the number of buildings will be increased in the later stage, and a small map will be added to the screen.

After completing the above steps, the user test will continue to be scheduled to see if there are new problems.

5.2.Detail the changes (if any) made to the interface application

A mini map has been added to the game, but due to technical reasons, the mini map can only be displayed in Unity and cannot be displayed in VR applications. In the following week, this need be resolved.

6. References

Websites

https://portarthur.org.au/

Software source code