Assignment 3

docx

School

Florida International University *

*We aren’t endorsed by this school

Course

4104

Subject

Computer Science

Date

Dec 6, 2023

Type

docx

Pages

Uploaded by jshepherd451

Team 1 : 6345188, 6363550, 6304977, 6333380, 6017385 Individual Input Step 1: User Experience Notes:  Learning the Game: The game provides a tutorial at the beginning, introducing players to the core gameplay mechanics, such as planting and defending against zombies. This tutorial is effective at teaching players how to play.  Effectiveness: Gets the user to keep playing over time by making the levels and challenges equally engaging and simplistic.  Likes: The game's humor and funny art style make it engaging and enjoyable. The gradual introduction of new plants and zombies keeps the gameplay fresh.  Dislikes: Some players may find certain levels challenging, which could be demotivating. The occasional appearance of tough zombies can be frustrating.  Efficiency: The games overall design allows for the user to easily select objects and excel beyond each challenge.  Motivations: The desire to unlock new plants, progress through levels, and strategize against different zombie types motivates players to continue playing.  Context: Players may range from casual gamers looking for a fun experience to more serious gamers seeking challenging gameplay.  Engagement: While the user is completing challenges, they can accumulate more items and face more enemies which improves the engagement over time.  Error of tolerance: With not many options, and overly complex levels and items, the game is nearly glitch free, and holds up even after many years of development. User Desires, Needs, Motivations, and Contexts:  Desire: Players desire a fun and engaging gaming experience.  Need: Players need clear instructions on how to play and access to a variety of plants and strategies.  Motivation: Players are motivated by progression, achievements, and the challenge of defeating zombies.  Context: The game caters to both casual and dedicated gamers, offering a range of challenges.  Innovative: The game set the standard for touch screen gaming and offers simple solutions without making overly complex actions that confuse the user.  Long lasting: This game has been around for many years, and to this day holds up to certain usability goals and standards. While future improvements were made with later releases.

User Experience Goals Satisfied by the Game: 1. Satisfying: The tutorial and gradual introduction of gameplay elements aim to satisfy players by providing a smooth learning curve. 2. Enjoyable: Players find the game enjoyable due to its humor, whimsical art style, and engaging gameplay. 3. Engaging: The game keeps players engaged through its variety of plants and zombies, challenging scenarios, and strategic decision-making. 4. Rewarding: Progression in the game is rewarding as players unlock new plants, levels, and achievements, creating a sense of accomplishment. 5. Motivating: Players are motivated to continue playing by the desire to defend against zombies, strategize, and complete challenging levels. 6. Simple: Without overly complex gameplay and reward systems, the game is easy to use and works appropriately depending on which action the user chooses. 7. Value: This game has set many standards and has become the essential iPhone game that uses touch screen mechanics and reward systems. Step 2: Usability Goals:  Effective to use: The game effectively allows players to achieve their goal of defending against zombies through strategic planting.  Efficient to use: Players can efficiently place and manage plants, which is essential for survival.  Easy to learn: The tutorial and gradual introduction of new plants and zombies enhance learnability.  Easy to remember how to use: The Almanac provides a reference for memorizing plant abilities and zombie weaknesses.  Satisfaction: The game's engaging art style, humor, and progression system contribute to player satisfaction. Design Principles:  Consistency: The game maintains a consistent visual style and control scheme throughout.  Visibility: Plants, zombies, and resources are visually distinct and easy to identify.  Feedback: Players receive feedback through animations, sounds, and notifications.  Affordance: Players can intuitively understand the purpose of plants and their interactions with zombies.  Understandable: The game does not have a typical tutorial but makes you learn through experience of the gameplay.

Locus of Attention:  The game directs players' attention to critical elements like incoming zombies and available sunlight/resources. Attention is focused on the playfield and resource panel.  Another aspect of how the attention switches is that new mini games are added as the player progresses through challenges. Increasing the motivation for the user to utilize the game. Dealing with Memory:  Short-Term Memory: The game requires players to remember their plant selection and placement strategies in the short term. While also having to use the game while the sunshine currency falls.  Long-Term Memory: The Almanac provides long-term reference material for plant and zombie information. Including strength of the zombies, and how to defend the home appropriately. Formation of Habits:  Daily challenges and rewards encourage players to form habits of logging in regularly.  The games simplicity allows for defensive strategies that work in a variety of situations.  Since the game uses the same mechanics for every action, habits are created by the user in how they interact with each challenge presented.  The progression system encourages players to develop strategies and habits for different levels. Gestalt Laws:  Proximity : Similar zombies often appear together, aiding players in recognizing groups of threats.  Similarity: Plants and zombies of the same type have similar visual characteristics.  Closure: Completing a level or achieving a goal provides a sense of closure and accomplishment.  Common region: There are two separate regions which provide the user with two distinct objectives either to save yourself or destroy the enemy. These share the same middle ground in which they interact. User Goals and Tasks:  User Goals: The primary user goal is to protect the garden from waves of zombies.  Tasks : Tasks include selecting and planting different types of plants, managing resources (sunlight), and strategically countering various zombie types.  Goals Tied to Tasks: Tasks are tied to usability goals such as effectiveness (defending against zombies), efficiency (managing resources), learnability (understanding plant abilities), memorability (remembering zombie weaknesses), and satisfaction (progressing and achieving goals).  Images that relate to the user experience and usability goals :

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First level, initiated by explaining how the game operates, and how to use the one simple strategy for the rest of the challenges

The first image shows the initial expansion of the field that the user will be interacting with, while the following image shows how the game develops into what will be the total field that the user ends up interacting with. Only objects are added to keep the gameplay dynamic and captivating. This shows how the locus of attention is altered through adding another mini game to break the original gameplay while utilizing the same mechanics.

Group collaboration Working with the team, we have concluded that most of us had the same ideas for what principles were being used. We thought the game has some downfalls including some design principles and other usability objectives that weren’t quite met. However, the simplicity of the gameplay and set design made for overall good experience that utilized many principles of design. In the following essay we have created together to combine some of our shared ideas and opinions of the game. The first 5 levels of plants vs zombies our team was introduced 5 principles that meet the standards for user experience. Keeping a simple interface, while expanding on interesting and complex items that the user can accumulate to use on future levels against increasingly more complex challenges. While being simple, the game possesses an interactive design using key elements that use touch-based features without changing screens making the design very intuitive and easy to use over time. As the player progresses through each level, visually it becomes more and more dynamic while maintaining the simple foundation that is first learned. Only several rows are added, but more complex weapons are achieved through completion, adding excitement for the user. Generating user motivation and enhancing the experience over the timespan of many levels. Having a monetary system keeps the user interested and constantly maintained focus to achieve better results in the game. Most importantly, since the game meets many objectives to enhance user experience and innovates new ways to utilize touchscreen technology, the game has held value over time and achieved opportunities to expand their franchise. On our second play through, we realized that the game not only achieves several standards for user experience but met all the usability goals through maintaining user interest, through the scalability of the levels and the user’s level of experience. Adding complex items that increase the effectiveness of the player, and as a byproduct increasing the difficulty of the following levels. Allowing for great engagement and ease of learning for the individual playing the game. The efficiency of the game is achieved through the simple interface and keeping the boundaries of the game to one screen. While the error of tolerance is managed through reducing complex interactions that could create a glitchy experience. Overall, the game meets the requirements for not only a game with a high user experience but meets the usability goals that are presented to us in the class. The locus of attention for the user is maintained through the simple interface and interactions; an unchanging setting that the user must interact with to complete challenges; finally, unique challenges that provide a different gameplay while maintain the simplistic foundations that were laid from the first levels. In the case of memory, the user is taught how to play the game within the first two levels, and only by completing further challenges does the user receive new items that easily learned through experience and trial and error. These are translated to habits through utilizing the same techniques for many different objects. Some gestalt laws that we have analyzed in the game are the laws of similarity, proximity, common region, and closure. Using similar objects, enemies and icons, the game is simple to use. These objects are related together through similar colors, and proximity. For example, the enemies come from one side, and the user guards another. Making a general region in which the objects reside, and enclosing each side to determine their differences and create a common region which they interact.

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Assignment 3

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