Three Projects I Critiqued
Tom’s Project
The name of his project is “Zen Space” and it is a particle system that can detect the user’s gesture and change its moving behavior. His purpose in designing this project is for people to relax with the flow of the particles. Our feedback is that he needs to do more research to make sure that these particles can achieve the “relaxing” goal. Also, background music should be taken into consideration because what people listen to plays an important role in the relaxing process. It is interesting to interact with those seemly living particles but how to design those particles matters. Because detecting user’s gesture and giving feedback is something we now see a lot. So more important is to create something new that is different from what we saw to make a new interaction with users.
Kenneth’s Project
Kenneth wants to make an escaping game to show the pressure and stress that burden on us. He will make a cryptographic device constructed by several buttons. Users need to push the buttons in a certain order to escape from a room. Our feedback is also that he needs to research first to check whether an escaping process works for pressure and stress. We also advise him to have more forms of decoding instead of only having the buttons. I find the idea of “escape” interesting because sometimes in our daily life we are escaping from reality. So it is important that how Kenneth will display those real-life factors in his game. How to make the process in the game connected to the user’s daily life will be a challenge for him.
Sheldon’s Project
Sheldon focuses on the problem of ocean pollution and wants to address this topic in his project. There will be two players, one cleaning the rubbish, another being a fish and trying to survive. He wants to have a form of cleaning plastic waste. Instead of using the joystick, he will make a paddle model which he believes can create a stronger interaction. He also mentioned that he might use sensors to detect some movement from the player two to control the behavior of the fish. Our feedback is that he doesn’t need to make this game have two players. It is better for him to focus on the topic itself and explore more on it. I like his design of the paddle. It will be interesting that you use this “real” paddle to clean the plastic waste. When you feel tired of paddling, then you start to understand how hard cleaning the ocean is.
What I find for interaction
I found that everybody’s project fulfills my definition of interaction. Also, one thing quite interesting is that we are all making games. Our games might display in different forms and have different topics and focuses, but games themselves are strongly interactive. Players will put themselves into the game and understand the maker’s information through playing it.
For my Project
I receive feedback that there is no need to have the same rule like the original battle game. I can use fewer battleships to make the location process easier or I can put the whole attack part in Processing. The most successful part of my proposal is that I made it clear about my purpose of making this project. First, to call back the memories for those classic games. Second, to provide another possibility for playing them. However, I didn’t realize that there are a lot of people actually don’t know this game at all. I forgot to explain the rules for this game in details. I need to add a clear explanation for the battleship game in my proposal to make it friendly for the new players. Now I am thinking of some changes on my project, to make it more original. The key is that I can pay a tribute to the old battleship game and also create something new. In details, first, I will change some rules of the original battleship game to better fit my project. Second, I will reconsider the possibility I want to display in my project. Lastly, I will also change my use of the joystick as Sheldon does.