USABILITY TESTING

PRE-USER TESTING

INITIAL USER QUESTIONNAIRE

We disseminated a questionnaire to regular users of the Memory Palace technique who we sourced on the Art of Memory Forum.

The following are the questions we asked and answers we received.

DO YOU THINK YOU RETAIN INFORMATION WELL?

WHAT WAY DO YOU LEARN? VISUAL OR AUSITORY

HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE MEMORY PALACE/ METHOD OF LOCI TECHNIQUE?

HAVE YOU USED IT?

DO YOU FIND IT USEFUL?

HAVE YOU USED VR BEFORE?

WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN USING VR TO HELP YOU MEMORISE?

DO YOU THINK THIS WOULD BE USEFUL?

WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO USE IT?

WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO USE IT EVEN IF IT WAS MORE TIME CONSUMING BUT MORE HELPFUL?

This initial questionnaire informed us that there was a general interest in such technology in the memory community.

Most users would be willing to try a VR Memory Palace. However, a significant minority has never used VR before and some of the users remain skeptical about whether or not a VR Memory Palace would be substantially different from a traditional Memory Palace in terms of the user experience.

EXPERT OPINIONS

In orrder to achieve a greater level of understanding surrounding the limits of the current technology and to conceive of the best method to bring about our program, we reached out to many experts in the tech industry.

The following include some of their thoughts and recommendations.

"I wish you luck with this great idea"

Fionnuala Meehan (Head of Google Ireland)

Throughout our conversations with various experests, there was certainly much interest in the project.

The most common piece of advice we received regarding the creation of the prototype was to use Unity game development engine.

While the expert's agreed that Unity would be the best way to achieve our goals, they were not sure how to achieve the specific functionality we desired.

We made the decision not to use the Unity engine as we had not the expertise to use this software and were not confident that we could learn in time.

Especially, given that ours was a complicated project.

USER TESTING

WIth some of our prototype completed, we gave our previously-surveyed users the ability to use this software and asked their opinions.

The following represents the data to come from that.

25% of our users said they felt nauseous after using the app for too long. This is a common problem with VR but is lower than we expected.

55% percent of our users felt that the prototype was too bright. This was one of the reasons for us to darken the colour scheme of the protoype.

60% of users said that they would use a complete version of the app while 70% said that, as it was, it helped them to memorise the poem "Hope is the Thing with Feathers".

90% percent said that they wanted more interactivity from the app which prompted the development of the 4th virtual room. This room features the ability to choose, to some degree, the items which are placed in the room. After its development, it was rated as the most popular room by far.

50% of users stated that the site was useful. A further 25% said it was somewhat useful. While the remaining 25% were either not sure or did not consider it particularly useful for their purposes.