Week 10 Workshop: Playtesting oracles

Handing your in-progress oracle to a classmate and watching, in real time, whether a stranger reads it the way you intended.

Field session

4 October 2027

The gap between what a designer intends and what a user actually experiences is the whole subject of this course, applied to something you built yourself. This workshop puts that gap in front of you directly, a fortnight before Build an Oracle is due.

Before the workshop#

Have a version of your oracle that works well enough to hand to a stranger without a live tutorial. Rough is fine. Silent is not — you need to be able to step back and watch.

In the workshop#

Paired playtesting: hand your oracle to a partner, say nothing, and watch what they do with it. Swap. Afterwards, each pair compares notes on where the partner’s reading of a result matched the designer’s intent and where it diverged — often in the direction of reading in more meaning than was built in.

Afterwards#

Adjust the mechanism disclosure if playtesting showed people missing it, and finish the build. What you watched a stranger do with your oracle is worth a sentence or two in the reflection you submit alongside it.