Testing

I have tested the nearly-finished project on two groups, one in the 20-40 age bracket and one in the 60-70 age bracket. 

A female tester aged over 60 really liked the project; she thought the landscape and models were impressive. She also found the controls very simple to use, an issue I had been worried about. She suggested that there were not enough objects to click on and look at; this is a valid criticism, but for purposes of this project it was necessary only to have one working object as making more would be repeating work already done. I would definitely expand the amount of objects if continuing work with the project, however. She also suggested the landscape was too sparse and that I should add trees and vegetation, a suggestion borne out by members of the 20-40 group.

A male tester aged over 60 thought the project was useful from a historical point of view. However, he had no interest in learning to use the controls and asked that I navigate around it for him. This could be a problem, as many people of this age group will not have  used similar applications such as video games and may not be interested in trying. It may be necessary to make more intuitive controls of a click-and-drag nature. This was my original plan but time constraints did not allow for it. He also wanted to get inside the crannog, which was part of my original plan but I did not follow through on it due to my decision to make the museum open air. In later incarnations I would be willing to make explorable architecture, which will involve significant work with lighting and baking textures. Again, time constraints do not allow me to do this at the moment, but it is something to think about. Both members of this group wanted the Unity player to be smaller, so that the whole player is viewable as you click into the homepage, so I will attempt to do this.

There were four testers in the 20-40 group, 3 male and 1 female. All enjoyed the project, but many were curious about what would happen if they went off the edge of the terrain, so it will be necessary to add more barriers to prevent this. One expressed a desire to explore the lake, but this goes beyond the scope of the project, as there is no facility at Lough Gur to explore beneath water level. One male, aged between 25 and 30, thought the texture on the crannog needed work. I agree, but this is again something I would do in conjunction with making it explorable.

During the testing process, some of the browsers were more suitable than others. Safari is currently my preferred browser for this project. It works well on Firefox as well, but many people use very restrictive pop-up blockers when using this browser, making it impractical. I will advise my users on the best choice of browser on the homepage, perhaps in the splash screen on the web application.