Hello everyone! We have had a good week of work over here and are happy to report that we’re making good progress on our project. Due to the good progress with our demo prototype we decided to develop a new testing environment that we can try applying the accessibility package that we are developing on. The new testing environment has a single L shaped room with some items of furniture, a door, a cauldron, and a variety of ingredients that can be picked up and moved around by the user. The environment contains a simple task where the user answers the door, reads a request for a potion, finds the recipe, and then creates the required potion using the correct ingredients.

We plan to apply our accessibility package to this scene and test how well it performs in a more complex environment with a different set of user tasks that need to be completed. Hopefully with this new testing environment we will be able to uncover any shortcomings with either the accessibility package or our navigation mechanics. If all goes according to plan then we will have the integration ready to test in this environment next week.

Team Wayfinder is happy to report another successful week on the books! The biggest event this week was QRB 1, where the team delivered a progress update and planning overview presentation to a panel of judges. During the presentation, we articulated the current progress on both our demo application and Unity package efforts, and laid out our plan for the remainder of the semester. At the conclusion of the presentation, we spontaneously decided to go bowling in the Reitz Union ($2 Tuesdays) and played a quick game!

Other than that, the team focused on refining the spatial audio mechanics of the demo, adding new features such as TTS speed adjustment, and setting up the structure of the unity package. We also renewed our efforts in reaching out to more potential testers in hopes of securing some more Alpha users. Looking ahead, we aim to continue with bug fixes, improvements, and nailing down the structure of our Unity package.

And yes, of course Vivian bowled a strike in this picture!

Team Wayfinder is back for the spring semester. During the first week of class, the team had discussions on the team’s achievements and plans moving forward. In the upcoming week, the team will reach out to DRC and other resources to schedule user testing for the prototype. At the same time, the team will work diligently to add other features to the prototype. Stay tuned!