Argax Project:: Dissertation: A Rough Draft Node

Node Status: COMPLETE

Pilot Study

Before running the final study, I first alpha-tested the game in its final online form by asking a handful of close friends and dissertation committee members to play the game and report any bugs. I asked these testers to play the game four times: twice in its normal mode, once with imperative turned off, and once with both imperative and reincorporation turned off.

After fixing the bugs revealed by these alpha tests, I ran a pilot study of the complete evaluation study pipeline, including assignment to groups and the two online surveys. I asked all of my dissertation committee members as well as some family and friends to complete this pilot study. This pilot also served as a beta test of the game.

Twelve pilot study participants completed the background survey. Of those, nine completed the first game session response survey. From those nine, I recieved six complete responses, with three in each group.

The pilot revealed a few more game bugs. The most significant issue involved getting the modified Zag interpreter to start correctly on Mac computers. The surveys were deemed sufficient and were largely unchanged. However, in order to help participants move through the evaluation steps correctly, the instructions to participants were clarified. Also, the two game session webpages were more clearly differentiated by using different background colors.

The pilot data set collected was too small to show any trends. In addition, I assigned the games to the groups incorrectly so that the first group played both games with reincorporation on and the second group played both games with reincorporation off. This was corrected for the final study.

==>