First Prototype – Process & Reflection

Reflecting on our experience on the first prototype:

Narrowing the scope for our first prototype wasn’t easy, there was just an overwhelming amount of things that could be done. We had decided that we would only include the most “popular” forms of inputs and outputs, as we didn’t want to overcomplicate things. Using a fan was one of the initial ideas we came up with that we stuck to as it’s something that can physically be added to a visual/work, but we hadn’t realized how much more complicated working with motors would be compared to other outputs. Even then, it was worthwhile learning experience, soldering wires to the motor and working with transistors.

Once that was decided, we had to decide on the kinds of visuals and non-text elements we wanted to add to our Twine tutorial. Inspired by the style of an microbit tutorial website, we decided to have a very “cartoon”-y feel to our drawings and have those replace buttons to add a level of playful interactivity. For the actual tutorial pages, we felt like actual images might be better suited as we didn’t want anyone to get confused over our drawings. Of course there are still kinks we have to figure out in how to best utilize Twine and organize our entire navigation system.