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Fort Vancouver Mobile - A video overview

Courtesy of: Research Assistant Aaron May of Washington State University Vancouver's Creative Media and Digital Culture program. Produced in 2011.

Video highlights from the apps (36-minute version)

This montage provides a sampling of some of the video media in the Fort Vancouver Mobile apps. This app is much more than just a video distribution system, but these videos show the variety of content, from expositional segments to new journalism to those intended to prompt the development of interactive narratives.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Beta test today with the WSU Vancouver Mobile Tech Research Initiative

About 20 WSU Vancouver students and faculty members visited The Village today to beta test the FVM app (thanks again to Forrest Burger, Brady Berkenmeier, Nick Hill and Troy Wayrynen for helping with the test, and to Dene Grigar and John Barber for bringing this group to the site).
This was the first time we have tested the PhoneGap app as downloaded from the Android market and Apple App Store, and we had virtually no problems getting the app on the phones this time (Yeah!). We did, though, have GPS location issues that need to be quickly addressed (not so Yeah!). Many of the different handsets did not seem to pick up the first GPS location, and that acted as a gateway (since the later locations are linked in sequential order), keeping the other locations from being properly tested. We do have a debugging bar in the app at this point that allows users to skip obstacles like that, but the debugging skip also seemed to throw off the narrative flow for the users, and deteriorate the immersion in the story. The more one skipped an obstacle, it seemed, the less interested they became in overcoming the next obstacle. In fact, none of the users in this test ended up at the final video scene, completing the Kanaka module (while almost all of the users in previous beta tests completed the app). It's not clear yet to me what the dynamics were with this group that caused the dramatic swing, but I have written comments from the group to analyze and reflect upon. The geolocation ability, essential to the app, also needs a lot of serious attention at this point.

3 comments:

  1. Despite the things that did not work, it was very exciting to see those many things that did. It was a great learning experience for the Mobile Tech Research Initiative Fellows today to experience GPS enhanced storytelling. Thanks, Brett, and all, for sharing this testing with us,

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  2. That is so great to hear! We certainly, as a design team, learned a lot from the experience, too. Thanks again!

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  3. It appears that the PhoneGap glitch that caused the GPS troubles during this test was fixed by updating the program framework. Next test is Saturday, June 18. Will post about that as soon as I can.

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