Introduction
This is my experience with the group process and what I thought about it. I did my best in this project and had fun with the group. I think we made something to be proud of.
1st group coaching
This is the first group coaching we had and it was with Lisette. We told her our concepts that we had so far and she gave us feedback about them. Because of this we worked at school for a few more days to get to a new concept.
Sprint 1 – Proces
This first sprint was more a design sprint rather then working on the experience in unity. One member had to stop with minor, which didn’t help with the motivation. Another one was not present for almost two weeks. This ment that we needed to make something with just three people. We thought about what we wanted in the environment and what we wanted to do there.
First sprint review/feedback
We had our first Sprint review and teacher feedback. This is where we showed our product and got feedback from both the company and the teachers.
We showed the company what we had with our main teacher there. After that we had to show our teachers what we had
Shoeby:
– Email what things we want to receive, creative briefing, textures, models
– Shoe-bee is great idea
– World must remain large because of the collection
– New teleport idea is a good idea
– Link app to game, enter sizes in advance, transfer shopping cart from game
– Check out Frederique’s research for ideas
Teachers:
– You must be able to see the puppet, for example in a reflection or smaller in your hand.
– Do challenges instead of dressing up yourself
– Really see the doll instead of using yourself as a decoration because you want to be able to see everything
– How does it go when you pick up a piece of clothing?
– Don’t throw it on yourself but on Bob
– Really some standard sizes with as choice customizing
– Watch out that you can not make weird figures
– Polycount and terrain is very high def
– The scaling is very out of proportion
– It is difficult if you want to have everything in it and also interact with everything
– One way to categorize things
– Hub-spoke models
– You have to take them into an experience not make them work
– But you do have free choice in where to go and so on
– Important to have the clothing system in the next prototype as soon as possible.
– Movement should indeed be easier
– Space should not only be beautiful, but also functional
– A lot has been made in a short time, that is clever
– Grass needs to be fixed
– More all functions, show the concept in the prototype
– Literally walk around things and show what the boundaries are
– E.g. start balcony of crystal, nowhere else except when it brings you back to balcony or mini balcony
– Doing things like recognizing your goal in the distance and being able to go there
– Find your way back, breadcrumbs
– Fill the world, but make sure you recognize patterns
– Think carefully about how people will use your world. If I want this, how do we do it?
– Recognizable things
– Idea – concept – design – prototype – test – repeat
– Design is missing
First retrospective
This was the first retrospective. We used an option from the spotify retrospective toolkit. We had a bar from proud to worries and we had to write down what we were proud of and what made us worry. After that we did a point vote and decided on some goals for the next sprint.
4th Group coaching
During this group coaching session we talked with Lisette about how the retrospective and the first sprint went. We discussed our new agreements and talked about the sprint review.
5th group coaching
This time we had a meeting with Kees. We talked about how far the project is at that time and about different aspects of our vr experience. We talked about story telling in our experience because Frederique wants to do some story telling. We also talked about the environment we have right now.
Teaching git
Iris and I made a presentation for the other two of our group to give them a reminder lesson about git. Iris gave the presentation and after that I did a demo. We also answered a few question afterward.
Sprint 2 – proces
After the retrospective we wanted to do stand-ups and stand-downs so everyone knew from eachother what we were working on. This sprint there were two people who were sick each one week after the other. We made points in the first retrospective about more communication. This did improve a bit, but it could have been better. We also wanted to show more of what we did to each other. We skipped this a few times but after a while we always did a meeting at around 16.00 to show what we made that day and how far we were. Everyone was still motivated to work on the project.
Second sprint review
We had the second sprint review. This time first with the teachers and after that with Shoeby. We didn’t have a great deal to show. A new environment and grabbing interaction. Almost all of the feedback from the teachers was how to improve on the environment. The feedback from shoeby was that we had to make choices from now on. For example about the collection we are going to use and for what gender the clothes are.
Sprint 2 retrospective
Before the retrospective we had a call with just Ebru, Iris and me because we’ve had seen that Frederique didn’t really do much. So we talked about if everyone felt that way and how to voice our concerns. While we did the retrospective we voiced our concerns and she confirmed that there was indeed something but didn’t really know how to tell us. There was something with the open communication, but she wanted to tell it when we had group coaching. The rest of us felt it was because of us but she said it wasn’t that.
The rest of the retrospective went well, we voiced our concerns and made action points to help with the concerns.
Sprint 3 proces
After a while Frederique finaly told us about what her problem was. She couldn’t focus on her learning goals because of what we wanted to make. We tried our best to change the concept to fit her learning goals and the motivation was back. In hindsight it was clear that she had motivation problems and we all wanted to fix it. If you don’t tell people what is up, they can’t help to fix it. We’ve done more of the show-and-tell in the 16.00 meeting and this also helped with motivation because you didn’t want to have nothing to show and everything that was shown lets us see how far we were. Focusing on learning goals was a priority because otherwise it felt as if you’ve had to do it for the sake of just doing it. This was also the sprint where we chose to leave handtracking behind in favor of controllers. And where I would focus more on my other learning goals and Iris could focus on developing. This went really well because we did more in the time we had.
Sprint 3 Retrospective
This time Iris had chosen a retrospective method and she chose the boat method. This method focuses a lot on good things. But the sprint went better than before everyone had motivation to work. We looked at the previous points of order and reflected on our sprint. All in all it went a whole lot better.
Sprint 4 proces
In this sprint we worked from home almost all the time because of the current world situation. This meant less physical help which can be tough. But we did our best and it went well, if someone ever had a question we had a questions channel on our discord where everyone could post a question and within no time at all the question would be answered.
Everything had a place to be said and everything worked out. Around 10.00 we had a start-up meeting and around 16.00 as always the stand-down. Everyone was still working on their learning goals. The only setback was that our git repository wasn’t working anymore. It was partly because of unity conventions but git also wanted to merge things that weren’t the same. Because of this we almost lost the entire project. Luckily fixed it manually and made a new git. This saved our project so we could work in the fifth sprint.
Thanks to one of the action points we made in the third retrospective we also asked more of the teachers. We also made priorities in our trello for which things should be made first and then next and after that. This helped with making the core better.
Sprint 4 retrospective
This retrospective went well. We talked about the previous points we made and if we did them and how it went. following that we put down sticky notes on the retrospective. We used the WARP (Wishes, Appreciations, Risks and Puzzles) method. It’s motivating to see what people wish for and appreciate but the main thing is the risks and puzzles that people see and have. The most risks were performance issues for unity and motivation issues thanks to covid and working from home. Everyone felt motivated because we were almost at the end of the project. After all this we made action points of the most important things.
The last sprint nr. 5
This was the last sprint. One week before the winterbreak and after that just two more weeks to work on the project. Sadly I was sick in the week before the winterbreak. But I saw that the other three did a good job on making even more things for the project. As always we did the 10 am meeting to see what everyone would be doing for the day and the 16 pm meeting to see how far everyone was. Questions were still bein answered in the questions channel of our discord and everyone was motivated to finish this project.
At the end we put everything together and it was a full experience. I was proud of what we had and I think the others are also proud of what we accomplished. Through the whole of the project our proces and work method went from bad to good and I felt that every sprint we did more and more.
At the end
Looking back on this whole project I think we made something we can be proud of. We did struggle in the beginning but every sprint we worked better and better. We asked questions when we needed help. At first we wanted to include every feedback we got and after a few sprints we picked only the things we thought would be good. It’s also good to have not only game developers in the team so you have a fresh opinion and eyes on what we are making and designing.