Critical Reflection

My overall reflection of the entire project has been very mixed. I feel some areas have been reasonably successful while others could have been done better. The realisation of the project was one of the most successful areas. My research into confidence building, which ranged from reading various internet-based articles to having a discussion with one of the university counsellors, all gave plenty of food for thought on what aspects of peoples lives self confidence plays a vital role and helped realise the potential for a presentation simulator. I also know from my own experiences how nerve-wracking giving a presentation can be. Even if it’s with a group of people one would normally feel completely relaxed with, presenting to them can still be quite nerve-wracking. These experiences also helped inspire and motivate me throughout and helped form the basis of the project.

Conducting user research for requirements I felt could have been done a lot better. I sent emails round the Interactive Media Design (IMD) students as I felt they would be the best people to speak to. Having gone through the previous years of IMD myself, I know they have had to, or at some point will have to, give presentations to a group of their peers and they would be able to give first hand experience of presenting and what they feel worked each time and what they feel they could have done better. But, unfortunately, I received no response from them. So, as an alternative, I had to have a very informal discussion with a group of peers and noted down some suggestions they made for the potential of the project.

Following the feedback and the results from the Christmas assessment (where all the work done up to that point was handed in and marked) it was clear there was a lot of work to be done and the work which had been done up to that point didn’t show clearly what the design visualisation was. So I had to properly assess what needed to be done, how to best go about doing each task and how to further visualize my ideas for the simulation. A visual prototype had to be made, user research and user testing had to be done and overall reflection of the entire project had to be done also.

The project was dependant on visual output to work so filming a real life audience was required to make the project work best. The audience was filmed reacting in various different ways dependant on the speaker’s vocal volume. These ranged from feeling quite intimidated if the speaker was talking to loud to becoming restless and uncomfortable if the user had gone silent for a considerably long period of time. They were also filmed arriving, as that footage could potentially be used as an introduction to the system starting up. They were filmed chatting away like a normal audience would whilst waiting for a speaker to arrive and begin talking and they were also filmed applauding the speaker and leaving the auditorium in order to give the users speech an appropriate ending. Filming these scenes also gave some consideration of some form of control device for the user to use to control when they are actually presenting and when they aren’t, so that the microphone knows when the user talking into the microphone is either actually presenting or is simply gossiping idly. This part of the project was very successful despite one setback of having to reshoot the video, as the first recordng was of a very bad quality. The second shoot, althought there were less audience members, was a much better quality recording and this was the footage that has been used throughout the project.

By far the biggest challenge of the project has been the programming. The programming has come with several challenges to overcome. As it currently stands, the set up does what it’s supposed to do in that it plays the appropriate video clips dependant on the volume of the users voice and there has also been delays programmed into the system, particularly for the user going silent as, in any presentation, a short pause is inevitable. Also a delay has been imposed for the user speaking over the comfortable volume as presenters talk loudly at certain points in order to emphasize certain points within their presentation. This is suitable for the user testing stage as it does exactly what the project is aimed to do.

The user testing and evaluation has also been a very successful part of the project. The users tested the system with a working prototype model, which gave a rough idea of what the final piece will do, and they all gave good, honest feedback about the working of the system and how to best go about making improvements to ensure OnStage is a successful project. I aim to hold another user testing session in the near future with a more improved prototype before the project is finalized.

The main challenges just now are getting the video clips to run more smoothly between each other, so as not to look so jumpy. This may involve re-shooting the audience at a later date so that the project will look much more smooth in time for the final presentation. There is also the challenge of programming some other form of user interface to have several other functions to the system. These include a “reset” function to restart the entire system from the beginning, a “start” button to let the system know that the user is ready to start talking and that any vocal input before this button is pressed is ignored, and also a “finish” button, so the system knows when the user is finished. There is also consideration of including some kind of result output so the user knows how they did, which will be displayed after the user has pressed the “finish” button, and also there will be more work done on improving the experience as a whole so the user feels more like they are actually giving a presentation to an audience and not to a computer.