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  Here are some photographs of the 6 participants interacting with the prototype.
  
  
  
  
  
• Observations

I noticed that 4 of the respondents would rest their head on their hand; a hand to cheek gesture in style of Rodin's The Thinker statue (1881) while they tested the game.

They touched their face occasionally, especially around the upper lip area.

I also noted that their legs were uncrossed during the whole duration.

Participants would occasionally squint at the squint and attempt to control their blinking.

In terms of posture, the participants did not slouch and leaned forward towards the monitor.

A range of reactions could be seen when they failed to clear the game or when their cursor touched the walls of the maze. These include:
o Making fists and banging the table top;
o Sighing;
o Laughing; and
o Shaking their heads.

2 of the respondents had problems starting the game. The instructions given were "Click on red dot to start". It was noted by the researcher that the respondents (including the one that made a comment about the instructions mentioned earlier) clicked and held down the mouse button. They even tried holding down the button and dragging the cursor. They had to make a few attempts before they could figure out how to get the game to start.

At least 4 of the respondents started off the game by moving the cursor rather quickly through the maze. Because they were too fast and with such narrow spaces between the walls of the maze, they kept hitting the walls and restarting. They would only start to slow down after a few tries.

A few minutes into the game, their impatience and frustration starts to show.
o Speed of the cursor started to increase again and because of that, frequency of hitting the walls and having to restart increased.

o When they are close to giving up, the respondents started to hit the walls of the maze intentionally just to hear the different random sounds that were triggered.

• Reflections

Because I was the tester for someone else's prototype the week before, this is what I have learnt from that experience:

Although respondents were in a pretty natural setting, I realised based on that the people around you (not just refering to the researcher but the people in the room) especially if they are watching you, making comments or talking while you test the prototype can heavily affect your overall experience or might influence your answers. Having a whole big group watching you test the prototype can be extremely pressurizing as well.

That is why for my user tests, I decided to use headphones. Even though in the real world, it is possible that a player may have an "audience" while playing games. But for research purposes, I needed to find out crucial information from the player's point of view and it should be as truthful and accurate as possible. His/her answers must not be influenced by others. That is also why I did not allow other testers to watch each other play with the prototype. If one person felt that the game should be given a 7 rating for level of enjoyment, the other person might have a tendency to give the same rating.

Overall my user tests went very well.

Only one of them managed to complete the game so does that means the game is too difficult for the "average" gamer? But does that mean I should tweak it to make it easier? Right now, the game is a single level game. Would it be too boring if the game was easy? Should I turn it into a multi level game instead? If so, what approach should I use: to allow the player the option to use the difficulty level in the beginning; easy, medium, hard? Or should I have many levels in the same game with varying levels of difficulty?