The Quick & Dirty show was a great opportunity to set up the shell of the exhibit and test out several of the interactions. For this event I was able to get a semi-working prototype of the phone interaction up and running and I was able to use the television to work as a screen connected to my computer. This gave a general idea of what the visual and essence of the exhibit would look like.

The goal was to user- test the following:

  • User flow
  • How visitors interact naturally with the objects in the space
  • How visitors interacted with the scripts, as I am still working on that interaction
  • Phone number length (short or long)
  • Audio Clips – with or without laugh track

The “Poster”

I made a mock newspaper to pass out to visitors.

The Set-Up

User Testing

Pre-entry, reading the mock newspaper (created for the Quick & Dirty Show)

Listening to one of the audio tracks, user-testing laugh tracks and content

User testing the phone interaction and entry point

More user testing of the phone interaction

Feedback

I invited Greg Triggs, producer/director/writer/comedian, who has been my project advisor and mentor since my high school senior project, to get his feedback on the project at this point in time. He was able to share invaluable insight and direction that I hope to incorporate into the next phase of the project.  I was also able to learn from his initial interactions with the objects, on how I might set up the script and typewriter interaction. Some of the feedback included:

  • Simple and seamless is best – make it easy to engage the passive visitor
  • Make the numbers short or consider using 555 like in tv/movies
  • Dress for the era for the presentation
  • Captions on video clips
  • and more…

I was able to user test the project with a few others which helped me observe how people approached the space and naturally interacted with the space.

The difficulty with the user testing was that the interactions were not fully ready, so more explanations than actual interactions took place. But it was a good step regardless.