Final Evaluation

You can see the videos of the interviews here , here ,and here. You can read an edited transcript of the interviews:  interview1 transcript, interview2 transcript, and interview3 transcript. (n.b. – I used my questions and Hyojeong’s questions to conduct these three interviews. Lucie and Jisu conducted three interviews using their sets of questions. My evaluations are primarily based on the results of the interviews I conducted; an analysis of responses both to my questions and to Hyojeong’s.)

My questions are for the general evaluation of the app’s purpose and functions.

Questions:

1. In a few sentences, can you describe the main function of our device and app as you understood it?

2. You saw Judy using FISCHE in her daily life. In what situation do you imagine using the app?

3. Can you think of other apps, device, or services that do something similar to FISCHE? What are they? How is FISCHE different?

4. Are there improvements you think could be made? Or does anything concern you?

My questions was meant to evaluate the clarity of the app and our presentation of the app (video & panel). All respondents seemed to understand exactly what the app was about, and when they would use it, suggesting our presentation of our app was successful. Interviewees also said that it was quite unique and differentiated from existing services because no other service had AIs intended for conversation training. Many saw it as an alternative to speaking to a native speaker or a tutor.

Interviewees felt that the general look and feel of the app was “comfortable.” I was initially concerned that they meant “comfortable but not interesting,” but it seemed that they meant “comfortable and not too rigid.” Considering that the point of our app is to make the users feel un-threatened and okay with making mistakes, “comfortable” seems like an appropriate feel to give off.

The single concern that everybody brought up was how big the database would have to be in order to support an AI that is as intelligent as our app needs it to be. This is a concern that came up during our user research as well. We did not make specific provisions to fix this concern because these technical provisions are beyond the scope of this class and the limits of our team’s ability. However, since everybody was quite concerned about whether an AI could make fluent, natural conversation, pick up on error, and use multiple languages, it may be necessary to include some “fixing” options where users can “fix” the situation if the AI misunderstands or makes a mistake. We could also request users to log mistakes so that the AI might improve in the future.

FISCHE moodboard

Interface/ Interaction Pinterest Board

Orchids to Dusk & Reflections

This is my final video for Orchids to Dusk!

 

You can click here to read my reflections on activity theory and its application to experiential games!

moving through virtual space – plans!

Game: Orchids to Dusk

Game summary: Your spaceship crashes (or lands?) on an unfamiliar planet. You see some vegetation, but no other life. And your oxygen tank is running out. There are no explicit objectives in the game. You’re free to walk around (using your mouse) and explore… till air runs out.

Character (as imagined by me): Orchid is an astronaut who has been travelling in her personal space capsule for a long, long time. She is from a planet – the planet’s name, she can no longer remember. She remembers that everyone else on the planet was named Orchid too, and that they were all sent off on individual capsules when the planet was on the brink of destruction. They all knew that very few of them would land somewhere habitable, but they were shot out into space anyway, each capsule full of hope. She wonders where everyone else is, where they’ve landed, and where she’ll land.

Plans for the video:

1. Darkness – Orchid explaining her origin (through text, no voice-over.) “I have been out here for a long, long time. We have been out here for a long, long time, but we have all been floating separately – thousands, maybe tens of thousands of us, all named Orchid, all from the same doomed home planet, sent out in hopes that some of us will land at a new home.”
2. Beeping and flashing lights – Orchid’s crash.
3. Darkness – more text: “In the first years of our flight, we were afraid. Then we were hopeful. And now? Now we are at peace. Some of us will float on till we die, never landing anywhere. Some of us will land somewhere uninhabitable.”
4. Orchid looks around the planet and begins to walk. Text: “We’ve had a lot of time to consider each scenario, to decide what choices we’d make in any circumstance.”
5. Orchid finds helmet of another Orchid, and then a body.
6. Orchid walks away, looking for an empty place. “We’re at peace, because…”
7. Orchid takes off helmet, oxygen leaks out, Orchid explodes into vegetation.
8. “all of us are on this journey together. And only one needs to live to tell the tale.”
9. End.

 

video of three places

You can witness my terrible video editing skills here!

 

Interaction Design Assignment 2

1. A short video about dinosaurs after the dinosaur apocalypse. One dinosaur rescues the other and suggests that they make babies to repopulate the earth. The rescued dinosaur rejects the offer because she is a lesbian dinosaur.
2. Design guideline book for a publishing house called “Sorry House.”
3. A 12 month calendar with the theme of koi fish.

These three are the best works I’ve produced in class. My favorite is the dinosaur video, even though it is very clearly amateur, because I still love the story line very much. The other two projects have more polished results but they aren’t quite as fun.

 

Interaction Design Assignment 1

Sit down, gather ’round, toast some marshmallows, it’s LIFE STORY TIME: I moved to the U.S. when I was six. For a year, my only friend was a Japanese girl who also spoke no English. We meowed at each other to communicate. I threw up a lot because I was anxious and because Americans have no standards when it comes to cafeteria food. My report card for first grade says “Pretends not to speak English in order to avoid following directions,” which is a source of great pride for me. I returned to Korea ten years later to attend high school, an experience which I will never stop being bitter about. Now I mostly feel homesick about places that only exist in idealized memories. Nostalgia is the sickest human emotion, said a professor I had a crush on once.
I like to eat flaming hot cheetos until every taste bud is on fire. I like weird stories and poems. I like the cool mildewy smell of basements and parking garages.
I have no dreams because I don’t think that far ahead into the future.

What I’d like to learn from this course: I’d like to learn the theoretical side of interaction design.