Challenge Tutorial – “First Actions”

Summary:

Challenge Tutorial – “First Actions” to be used at the Science Center.

Link to first version:
https://vimeo.com/52710725

Observations from Science Center used to create this tutorial:
- More examples using repetition of actions;
- Explanation of interface: panels, mainly the float panel menu with number to change action’s properties such as speed, duration, distance because they had no idea about what it was;
- More and attractive characters to motivate them to pick challenges with more characters.

Early this week, in my meeting with Jordana, we decided to change my previous plans from last week. Now I am focusing on the Challenge Tutorial for beginners (“First Actions”) to get the video done this week and start working on the voices part next week and have it ready to be tested at the Science Center by November 10^th! It will be my first tutorial being watched by kids.

As I observed in my first experience there, the kids had never seen Looking Glass before and they do not have enough time to create an advanced challenge, so for this tutorial I start explaining the Looking Glass interface very quickly and approaching only the following basic actions: Say, Walk, Move and Turn.

I am using the same challenge I posted here, about the Puppy, but in that version, I was doing advanced movements with body parts. I was planning to show some of them, but I decided to leave it to more advanced users. It was going to be too much for 15 minutes. So I simplified it as much as I could, keeping the same characters because a cute pet is attractive, the kids characters (one from each gender) to help them to get familiar with the scene. Another reason is that with more characters on the scene, it is easier to make the story more interesting. Maybe with that, the tutorial could motivate them to pick a challenge with more characters and more possibilities of interaction among them.

When I was creating my sample challenge, I also remembered that a very smart kid gave an interesting suggestion in the Science Center. We asked him how to improve the tutorial. He said he liked it but it could have more examples. So I thought that repetition of the actions could be a good way to supply this missing because repetition usually helps kids to memorize how to do something.