You'll have people outside your team playtest and evaluate your video game. External playtesting of a game is similar to user testing of a website, app, or device.

Conducting this evaluation will help determine how well your game meets the project challenge criteria (i.e., is your game innovative, engaging, functional, usable, and balanced). Your team will use the evaluation data to identify issues with your game and make improvements before the public presentation.

1. Prepare Survey

   • Save a copy of this survey form in your team's shared folder.

   • Open your saved copy of the survey, and modify the last question to list your game's targeted gaming motivations.

   • Each participant will complete this survey after playtesting your game.

2. Recruit Participants

   • You'll need 3-5 participants to playtest your game in individual sessions.

   • Ideally, the participants should be similar to your target player persona — especially in terms of gaming motivations.

3. Explain Playtesting Process

   • Let the participant know the game is being tested, not the participant.

   • Let the participant know the game is a work-in-progress.

   • Ask the participant to “Think Aloud” while playing the game.

   • Do NOT explain your game because you need to observe first impressions.

4. Observe Playtesting

   • Allow the participant to play the game for about 5-10 minutes.

   • Record notes on issues you see or hear the participant experiencing.

   • If necessary, remind the participant to think aloud while playing.

5. Ask Follow-Up Questions

   • Afterwards, you can ask the participant about specific issues you observed (if you need to better understand why the issue occurred).

6. Administer Survey

   • Open your saved survey, and click the "Preview" icon (at top-right of form) to allow the participant to take the survey.

   • Afterwards, be sure to thank the participant for their time and feedback.

7. Analyze Data

   • After all the participants have completed the playtesting and survey, review your playtesting session notes, and summarize your game's issues in this evaluation findings table. For each issue, you'll estimate its severity, identify a possible fix, and estimate the feasibility and priority of making the fix.

   • Next, open your survey, and click the "Responses" tab (at top) to show the summary of the participants' responses.

   • For each survey question, there will be a histogram (similar to bar chart) showing the distribution of the responses:

     • Ratings of 1 or 2 are negative because the participant either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement.

     • Ratings of 3 are neutral because the participant neither agreed or disagreed with the statement.

     • Ratings of 4 or 5 are positive because the participant either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement.

     • After each histogram, you’ll see the participants' explanations for their ratings. If these reveal any new issues with your game, add them to your evaluation findings table.

   • Create a document that will contain all the histograms (in order) for your survey data. Hover over the top-right corner of each histogram, click the copy icon, and paste each histogram into the document.

❏ Deliverables

Submit the following for your team:

• Evaluation findings (table of issues)

• Survey results (document with histograms)

example of deliverable

You'll create a slide presentation that summarizes the evaluation and refinement of your team’s video game. Practice your presentation before delivering it to your class. This will be an opportunity for other project teams to ask questions and provide constructive feedback to help your team prepare for the public presentation.

Your team's presentation should include the following (in this order):

• Project Team: product name, team name, team members & their roles

• Game Summary: Use your team's Game Design Document to provide a brief summary of the game (such as its premise, objective(s), basic gameplay, etc.).

• Target Player Persona: Be sure the persona is useful for understanding the target players that the game was designed for.

• Solution Evaluation: Briefly describe the participants (number, gender, age, etc.) involved in the playtesting of the video game. Briefly summarize the evaluation findings, including the survey results.

• Solution Refinements: Briefly describe the refinements that were made to the video game. If helpful, you can include “before” and “after” images to better show certain types of changes.

• Project Poster: Show a preview of the team’s project poster, and briefly explain what information is included on the poster.

The presentation should have 6-10 slides and take 5-10 minutes to deliver.

❏ Deliverable

Submit your team’s slide presentation

You'll create a poster that helps explain and show how your team researched, designed, prototyped, and evaluated your team's video game.

The poster will be a visual reference to supplement the explanation and demonstration that your team gives during the public presentation event. Even though a poster won't explain or show everything about your team's project, a person should be able to understand the key aspects of your team's project just by reviewing your poster.

The goal is for the poster to be clear, concise, engaging, and professional in terms of its content and visual design.

The standard size for a large poster is 36 inches wide by 24 inches tall (your teacher will clarify if a different poster size will be used). Print-quality materials typically use a resolution of 300 pixels per inch. Your teacher will have the posters printed prior to the public presentation.

1. Determine the content to be included on the poster. Gather text and images from your team's previous project deliverables. You may need to modify certain content to make it more suitable for a poster (e.g., text might need to be summarized or simplified, images might require labels or captions, etc.).

2. Determine the layout of the content by sketching a small-scale poster mockup on a regular sheet of paper. Be sure the layout will be easy to understand and follow.

3. Create a full-scale digital version of the poster using a drawing/illustration tool, such as Google Drawing, Pixlr Editor, Adobe Illustrator, etc. Be sure the visual design of the poster reinforces the concept behind your team's robot solution.

4. Save or download the final poster as a PDF file that your teacher will have printed.

POSTER TEMPLATE

• You can use this Google Drawing template which is set to 36 inches wide by 24 inches tall. Zoom in or out as needed to add text, images, etc. – but do not change the canvas size. (To use the template, make a copy from the File menu, and save the copy to your shared team folder in Google Drive.)

• If you use a different drawing/illustration tool, set the canvas to 36 inches wide by 24 inches tall at 300 pixels per inch (10800 pixels wide by 7200 pixels tall).

• If your teacher has specified a different size for the poster, use that instead.

❏ Deliverable

Submit a PDF of your team's poster for printing

This shows a generic layout for the typical content that would be included in a project poster. However, you can modify the layout and appearance as necessary.

Your team will use your evaluation findings to implement refinements to your team's video game. Focus on the highest priority design changes first. Implement as many refinements as possible depending on the available time and resources prior to the public presentation.

If possible, test your game again with new participants to verify whether the refinements resolved the issues.

❏ Deliverable

Submit a list briefly describing each refinement that your team implemented

Your team will explain and demonstrate your project solution to a public audience, which might include professionals from industry, college, and your school – as well as parents and fellow students. Some audience members might be acting as judges reviewing the team projects. Many audience members may be learning about the project for the first time.

Your team's presentation needs to tell a complete story (with a beginning, middle, and end) in just a few minutes. The presentation should be clear, concise, engaging, and professional.

• Plan and practice your team’s presentation and demonstration

• When helpful, refer to your poster and product website during the presentation

• Be sure to allow the audience to examine and interact with your project solution

• Be prepared to answer questions from the audience

• Be prepared to adapt if a technical issue occurs during the demonstration

❏ Deliverable

Participate in your team's presentation and demonstration at the public event

An important part of celebrating the completion of a project is expressing gratitude and appreciation towards people for their help and work on the project.

You'll create a list of people that you want to recognize:

• Thank people who provided help to you or your team

• Recognize exceptional work done by someone on your team or another team

Your list could include any people inside or outside the class that helped during the project. Be specific when describing the help or work done by the other person.

During your class celebration, share some of the recognitions publicly.

❏ Deliverable

Submit your list of recognitions

As an individual, you'll respond to these project reflection questions.

Your teacher might also have you participate in group reflections: your team could reflect on its performance, and the entire class could reflect on the project.

❏ Deliverable

Submit your project reflection responses