ux-portfolio-JAlvarado28

Gaming on a Second Monitor

by Jesus Alvarado ~ 03/07/2021

Goals:

-Connect to a second display whether it be a monitor or a tv.

-Set up the sound to be heard from the second display.

-Set the correct resolution and play games on the second display.

memorable: Should be easy to remember and be able to apply it with any other system such as windows or apple.

error-tolerant: Should be able to fix it even when something goes wrong. Such as having the display output be stretched out or zoomed out.

Description:

Last week, my friends and I had a game night in the living room. We all wanted to play a horror game, but I was the only one who had such a game on my laptop. I brought it out and had them connect the laptop onto a tv. They were able to extend the display, but not figure out how to play on the second display or how to get the sound to stop coming from the laptop itself.

# Description of the interaction:

  1. I connected the HDMI to the ports on both the laptop and the television.
  2. The television was automatically be set to mirrored in which I changed it to an extended display. image
  3. I set the second display as primary in windows. This made it easier to move the windows or applications around.
  4. I started the game from steam and made sure to make it in windowed mode by pressing ALT + ENTER or changing it from the game’s settings.
  5. I then set the resolution to fit the second display from the game itself. I dragged it in which it automatically stretched the game to fit the screen.
  6. From the first display, I set the sound to the second display as it played on the first display by default. image
  7. I then connected the controllers and started playing with my friends.

# Outcome:

Overall, it was a fun yet stressful situation as five people tried to troubleshoot how to set up the television to play from the laptop. What was interesting was that everyone knew how to extend the display yet we could not figure out how to drag the game to the television from the laptop display. After changing it to windowed mode, we could drag it to the television yet it full-screened on the laptop as we tried to change the resolution. The process was memorable as we can apply this to any other situation such as getting a monitor, a television, or a projector. It is an easy process once we knew how to set the television as primary. We were lucky that the system was error-tolerant as it gave us a minute to confirm the changes we did to the display. If it was not accepted, then it would have gone back to how it was previously.