What is Arcadia?

The Arcadia Report is an immersive murder mystery unique to you, transforming your city into an escape room. Travel to real world locations, unlock clues, and uncover the secrets of Arcadia as you delve into corrupted records of a failed startup with murderous consequences.

Find out more here.

Where We Left Off

In week 3, I was deep in rounding out the new tutorial case that sees you rebooting (or attempting to reboot) the mysterious Arcadia database full of dark secrets that might point to why the founder turned up dead. You can read more about that in the previous dev log. This meant hopping between testing with old and new players while rounding out the case and honing the visual design. So with that done, the goal was to bring a bit more focus to the work and focus in on the next stage: solving the murder of Arcadia’s founder.

Week 4 Review

I set out to do a ‘content bash’, focusing in on the story of Arcadia, working out knots, and polishing up the clues for the first case before prototyping it out in the new designs.

All good, all going well. Then I started properly analysing the results after the final session from the latest round of testing.

via GIPHY

The second half of the week then brought on an abrupt gear shift, going from content focused to rapidly prototype a v2.5 streamlined design which tackled the key points of feedback. In hindsight, I should have kept my focus and finished out the sprint, letting the design wait until next week. However, on the upside, I now am entering week 5 with all the essential ingredients and ready to bring it all together.

Highs & Lows

Wins

• Fun to dive back into the mystery and begin dreaming up clue designs.
• Clear trends emerged from playtesting with users: highlighting the overall success of the design overhaul and a few questionable areas remaining.
• Used feedback to draw conclusions on the most confusing elements of the new design and streamline the experience even further. Feeling good about reaching the point at which no more can be removed and focusing on a killer core experience.
• Dabbled in icon design (loss: got seriously distracted by icon design and the amazing work of Susan Kare) and restructured the core archives.

Losses

• I had hoped to have a full flow of the first mystery complete in the new design. Instead, I spent more time refining the design so actually bringing the mystery of Arcadia’s CEO death to the new design will be a job for this week.
• Reviewed and restructured the existing content for the first mystery but didn’t leave enough time for further enhancements and new content.

Lessons Learnt

• Plan outcomes, not tasks: I tried to cram too much into one week and had a growing to-do list instead of a clear, top-priority outcome. This week I’ll be getting back on track and focusing my efforts more towards a key outcome: the redesigned full mystery prototype.
• Pay attention to what users do, not just what they say: From the testing sessions, half the trends were based on observing the same repeated patterns even though only 1–2 testers actually verbalised the issue. These have actually been key in further streamlining the new designs.
• Block out time for every part of the research process, not just testing: I allowed time for testing but not enough for actually setting up the tests, not to mention analysing and responding to feedback from said tests. Seems obvious in hindsight but at the time it seemed like enough.

Next Week

So after the unplanned but valuable detour into rethinking how to improve the design not just based on issues users noticed but the root cause of those problems, it’s time to buckle down. My goal is to have a prototype of the next mystery up and running to road test the new design. This is also a chance to start having more fun experimenting with the visual imagery, glitches, and corrupted clues you’ll find scattered around Arcadia’s creaking database. So now it’s back to plotting a murder (fictional, of course).

Until next time, stay safe.

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