Step 1
Project 1: Anger Visualizer by Rudy Song
This project is intended to visualize anger in a fun way, thus encouraging people to express their anger instead of restraining it. In this project, Rudy decided to use vibration sensor to track the change in the heartbeat of the user and use the data as a criterion for judgement of anger, then link it to a humidifier or a vaporizer to simulate smoke and a thermometer to precisely show the data. I appreciate his thought of “extending communication”, which expands my definition of interaction because I didn’t think about that before. However, we all had some question about the connection of heartbeat change and anger as well as the way to annoy somebody in a short time.
Project 2: The Super Bow by Henry Shaffer
This project is a competitive game combining both physical and mental activities, aiming at making use of technology to promoting relationships between families and friends. Modeled after an archery competition, two competitors both hold a bow with accelerometer on it. To win the game, one need to “shoot” the target with right answer to the IQ puzzles. This project is highly interactive for me, and challenge to both the mind and the body is attracting for people who love games. To improve the project, some member in our group offered the advice of adding more questions of other types apart from logic puzzles.
Project 3: Dancing Digits by Shina Chang
Inspired by small and portable like TechDeck, Shina wants to make a miniature Dance Dance Revolution game for fingers. There will be an elevated stage consisting of four directional arrows pointing forward, backward, right, and left for fingers to press according to the screen. This project is cute but the idea is not new. The feedback from other group members is adjusting its difficulty and set different modes to increase its playability.
Project 4: Pick Your Pokemon! by Anna
Anna categorizes her project for a psychological treat. In this project, participants need to answer particular questions silently in mind to change their heart rate, then a representative Pokemon that suits the participant will pop up from one of the four boxes. The idea is good, but I doubt the uniqueness of the result triggered by different heart rates. So one feedback is that more kinds of sensors can be applied to add to the complexness of the project.
Step 2
My group members think the most successful part of my proposal is the the idea behind the game and the educational value of it, while Anna put forward the question of whether is it a serious project aiming at education, or a game project with more fun. I find her doubt quite thought-provoking for me about the combination of the two because if we don’t handle them well, they will influence each other. So after my discussion with my partner Citlaly, we decide to orient it as an educational project and we also discuss over trivia like whether the character would die or not and the way we present the information about world problems (there is another feedback that pop-up pages of information will be distracting) . They’re all inspired by this feedback. There are also other questions about the technical part of our project like how the character moves. For these questions, I have a vague idea in my mind, but the concrete coding is still challenging to be made real. Anyway, I am happy to receive these feedbacks and I’ll make our project as user-friendly as possible.