Week 7 - Designing Questions

Looking back at my Prototype I user questions, I realise that several of them lack clarity. Here are the questions I asked users when testing my Prototype I:

1. Comment on the suitability of mouse input to play the game (also, Alternative ways, keyboard input?)

2. How suitable are the positioning of the game elements?
3. How suitable is the size of the board? (eg: 5 x 5 suitable for short games, 10 x 10 for longer/fuller games)

4. The points for squares and mines, is it too much or too little?

5. How big is it of an achievement do you feel when gaining or losing points?
6. Are there too many things to keep track of? (Eg: confusing, or able to formulate a game strategy?)
7. Anything else to add here.

If you noticed, these are slightly different to the ones that were in my Statement of Delivery. I decided to define them more clearly, shortly before testing in the Week 7 B Prac.

From the Week 7 contact, I find I have a few tendencies when creating my questions. My questions seem to be compound, in that they ask for more than one thing in a single question. Additionally, I tend to provide supplementary questions in brackets for some of my questions in the hope of clarifying things.

So, to list them out, questions 1, 6, 7 are qualitative, and questions 2, 3, 4, 5 are quantitative, though not the best examples of quantitative. This is because most of my questions turned out to be closed questions, which can be answered in one word. If I could redo my questions, they would be something like this:

1. What do you think about using mouse input to play the game?
2. Comment on the positioning of the game elements.
3. Which size of board is most suitable? 5x5? 10x10?

4. How big do you think the penalty for uncovering mines should be? -1 points? -2 points? -3 points? -4 points? -5 points? More than 5 point penalty?

5. Comment on your own sense of achievement when you gain or lose points.
6. Is this game too complex?

7. How satisfied were you with your own game strategy? Very Satisfied, Satisfied, Neither Satisfied nor Satisfied, Dissatisfied, Very Dissatisfied.

8. Add any other comments here.

These questions may be harder for users to answer, but I feel that they could give clearer feedback for use in my future prototypes.

View my other blog posts to see my questions and the feedback I received for Prototype I.