Professional Master’s Capstone Project
Vocab Scramble
A virtual reality, vocabulary game designed to assist in language comprehension and rapid vocab recognition through an accessible, immersive learning environment. Made for Meta Quest.
Role: Designer, Programmer | Timeline: August 2022 — March 2023
BACKGROUND
When initially starting this project, I identified goals and my target users in the first course of the Pro Master’s capstone sequence. In that course, I decided to create a virtual reality application that is both engaging to and accessible for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. The idea was to consider how the interactions and user experience could be easier for this demographic, focusing on unique adjustments for accessibility purposes.
PROCESS
Empathize & Define
Choosing an app that would be beneficial or educational to my target users
English tends to be a second language for people who identify as Deaf or hard-of-hearing and their native language is American Sign Language.
Scrabble has been found to help increase vocabulary recognition, which is often a learning curve in ESL.
Ideate
Prototype
Environment design
Using low-poly assets from the Unity Asset Store, I created two separate scenes, a room and a snowy tundra. I selected colors and added them as materials to bring the scenes to life. I used Figma to start the designs for the UI featured in the photos.
Interactions
In designing the game’s basic functions, I programmed four key interactions that the players experience.
Test
Using five participants, I had each test the game and followed with an interview. Considering different possibilities for learning and what my target demographic might find as the most natural interactions, I prepared four variations of the game and had each participant test one version.
Variations
— include players using a raycasting line versus hand tracking to interact with objects and changes to the gameplay that will have scene changes as a player enters words (i.e. snow starts falling when the word ‘snow’ is entered) versus the static game scene (already snowing when the game starts).
Participants & Findings
Participants varied in age and gender and ranged from frequent VR users to completely new users. I wanted to ensure there was a variety of experience when testing the game, to ensure even the most inexperienced player could navigate their way through the game as opposed to someone who might find the interactions more intuitive.
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3/5 participants were avid Scrabble players. They mentioned how intuitive the gameplay was based on their experience with the game. However, minor changes that I made to Vocab Scramble to differentiate it from Scrabble seemed to confuse them. One fix was to move the star back to the middle of the board.
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When reading the in-game instructions, 3/5 participants skimmed over the instructions. They felt that the layout of the instructions as separated steps, made them look like buttons and it was easy to overlook. I changed the instructions to make the layout more simplistic.
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For most of the participants, they noticed the white score box turn green but did not associate that with them guessing the correct answer. The two participants whose variations did not include a scene change, both suggested a change with the correct word (ex. it snows when they input ‘snow’) as it is in the other two variations. I added a score count as an additional visual.
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For those with V3/V4, I had them briefly use the controllers during their test, so they could compare. I found that the controllers and hand tracking were fairly equal in terms of how natural and intuitive they felt during gameplay. Hand-tracking glitches made the experience feel unnatural. I opted for a final version of the game that allows the option to choose between them.
REFLECTION
My first time coding was no easy experience, but it was so rewarding. Cracking even the most minute interactions was always exciting and makes me proud of my work on this project. While I like researching and troubleshooting my way through an issue, I learned to ask for help when needed. At the very least, the project benefitted from a fresh pair of eyes.