May 2025 Update
Doing user testing with the people who will actually end up using Pizza Maths VR to improve their maths skills is one of the most important parts of VR development. And one of the most rewarding.
This young man (son of a good friend of mine; video posted with dad's approval) really put the first mini-game through it's paces. He diagnosed the root cause of a bug we'd been struggling with for weeks in about 1 min flat. He then went on to correctly make more pizzas and rack up more earnings on the cash register in his first ever session than anyone we’d ever seen before. While we've tested with over 100 young people aged 11-15, most of those sessions were quick tastes of the game, each of about 5-15 minutes. Having proved himself to be a superuser, this young man - who we’ll call “Agent Alpha” to protect his identity - will be our primary user testing coordinator across the Lancashire / Cumbria border region. This will earning himself some great bragging rights for his CV or UCAS form. It might well also help him extend his social circles at his new secondary school. And, of course, he’ll be doing us a huge favour by helping us to sample feedback from the opposite end of the country to ensure our sampling is as fair as possible. In this footage you can see from the way he moves how quickly he got the hang of the multitasking required to keep on top of entering the correct quantity of each topping, while making sure any pizzas cooking in the oven don’t burn!
Agent Alpha gave us a full half hour feedback session of exactly what he liked and disliked about the game. As an avid gamer he was able to show us examples of the type of achievements we should add to the game and was insistent that if the game was launched as it is, he might well move onto something else after one or two hours of gameplay. But if we enabled him to gain a continued sense of progress by awarding achievements, unlocking new capabilities and enabling him to spend the money he earns on cool modifications to the restaurant, then he would likely keep coming back to the game over and over again. It’s the regular repetition of practising these maths skills that leads to the neuroplastic changes that improve capabilities as time goes by so the replayability is absolutely critical to Pizza Maths VR’s success. We, of course, had all these features on the roadmap, but hearing it from the horse’s mouth (so-to-speak) is vital to keeping these things in scope as we head towards our Minimum Viable Product release in the Autumn / Fall. Best of all was him showing us the games he regularly plays, both in VR and on flat screen, so that he can point out the achievements that he keeps an eye on and values the most.
If your 11-13 year old has a Meta Quest 2 or 3 VR headset and you think that they would enjoy / benefit from the responsibility of running some Pizza Maths VR user testing at home with their friends (or at school with some classmates) then please do get in touch so that we can discuss further… click this link to send us a message.
