Author: Olivia

• • Conception and Design

The basic idea of our project is the materialization of Mario-like game. To be more specific, users’ motion of tread will be sensed and transferred to the character’s motion of jump and movement simultaneously. So we decided to use pressure sensors. At first I was a little worried about the endurance of them because users are expected to step on them, so we stuck them to three little pieces of foam in order not to damage them. My partner also brings a large plank to fasten them. After borrowing 3 pressure sensors at ER, I found one of them different from the other two with much lower sensitivity, like when I experimented stepping on them, one showed value between 30-50 while the others’ values were both over 500. So I changed it. Another detail is that at first we decided to attach the sensors directly on the plank, but considering that the exposure of sensors would not be so aesthetic, we used foam to conceal sensors and my partner even did some painting. To make it as comfortable for users as possible, we cut it to three pieces similar to the size of human feet. For me, details are important in choosing and using materials. Actually, there is another option proposed by one user in user testing session to use DDR as a substitution for pressure sensors, but because there was not enough time for us to buy one, get familiar with it and change our code, we gave up this idea.

• Fabrication and Production

There were many significant decisions and changes we made during the process of making this project. When we first started our project, we only had a rough expectation of the final effect without actual fabrication plans. So in my first meeting with Citlaly, we asked Nick for his help of circuits connection part, and he offered the idea that we use two separate metal pieces and a piece of foam with hole to function as a large switch. Because we couldn’t get metal at that time, we borrowed a roll of conductive tape and made a miniature of our real project. Sadly, it didn’t work. While I was waiting for my mom to bring the metal I need, I turned to professor Young several days after, professor Young advised me to return back to the more common and much simpler method of pressure sensors during our meeting. I tried to connect the circuit referring to our recitation tasks and my midterm project, after like over two hours of assembling, the serial monitor shows that it worked. So regretfully the metal was at last of no use, but it’s really cheerful to see the pressure sensors work. Another large decision was the movement of the character. At the very first our imagination was that there was only one sensor and it could sense the stomp and jump of the character and the background would scroll automatically, so there would be no need for leftward or rightward movement. But when we started to put our idea into practice, we found that there are many problems, such as what’s the height and distance of one jump, and how do the only sensor differentiate between jump and stomp and so on. So during the process, we adjust the original idea gradually into our final one: using three sensors to separately control the direction of left, up, and right. Although our project is only half-finished before the user-testing session, we still got lots of useful feedbacks and advices. I listed them all in my note and classified them. There are two main branches, one is clearer instruction and one is higher difficulty. According to these, we made adaptations like adding arrows on the foam, adding description of the story background in the corner and I also changed the speed of the character and evil triangles after many experiments. It’s really important to make revisions to make project more user-friendly according to users’ feedbacks because they’re what our project is for and their thoughts matter. By the way, although we confronted many obstacles such as sometimes one direction of movement doesn’t work or the ending page doesn’t appear, but professors, learning assistants and other fellows’ helped us a lot to solve the problems, and we’re really thankful to them.

• Conclusions

The goals of our projects are letting people know more about the dark side of our globe and inspiring them to make a difference to the world. Users can read information about different world problems by the links we give and make substantive contributions by making donations on them. And looking back on my definition of interaction, I wrote “A process of mutual response according to each other’s former behaviors. It shouldn’t be fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different versions. In most cases, humans are the centre of interaction, their needs are emphasized  and the trend is becoming more and more obvious.” in my Preparatory Research and Analysis.I think that to a large extent, our project results align with my definition of interaction, when you make different decisions of moving towards different directions, the character follows and the random movement of evil triangles respond to you randomly. As a response to the result, you pondered quickly and make your next decision… Moreover, the character is free to go anywhere within the screen, so I think our project is not fixed. However, we still need to improve with the aspect of user-experience because some part of our project is still rigid. If I had more time, I would add a count-down timer to this project and set a time limit for winning the game because that’s one of the suggestions came from the user-testing session, but due to the lack of time, I didn’t make it. Anyway, from this experience, one important lesson I learned is that we should always have the overall consciousness and complete tasks step by step, so that even if you encounter obstacles, you can be calm and rational enough to overcome them, even not, you can by pass them.

• Pictures and videos

Video Link

For this recitation,  I attended the workshop of Object Oriented Programming. We first reviewed some important definitions of OOP and then did the coding following professor Tristan’s instructions to have a more concrete understanding of it. In the coding session, we classed Person by assigning values to x, y, headSize, bodyHeight and name. We also used “void introduce” and “void display” to make those “people” show on the screen with their “self-introduction” on the console. Then we applied array function to the original code, similar to what we did in class. The last part is most interesting, it used mousePressed function to remove the “People” once it get clicked, I didn’t quite understand some terminological abbreviates at first, then I referred to the Processing website and finally got them. In the self exercise session, it suddenly came to me that I could combine this code with the colorful balls one which we did in class. The effect would be that ten random balls bouncing around and when I click them, they got blasted. Below are the screenshot video and the code.

Video

Code

In this recitation, I used three potentiometers to respectively control the R,G,B of the landscape picture. At first, I had intended to change the color of the girl’s dress on another picture, but I realized that I don’t know how to change it partially, so I substitute that picture for this one. I applied the tint function we learnt in class as well as the map function which I got reviewed not long before. I also confronted some problems in the last part. Because the serial communication code for Arduino was somehow not in its original form, I got confused about the “serial.print” part and when I operated it, my potentiometers didn’t work. With the help of the learning assistant, I got my mistakes corrected(where I didn’t type in double quotation mark and wrongly input semicolons instead of commas).

Screenshot

Code

After reading Computer Vision for Artist and Designers, I feel like the ways technology was lacked in my project because according to the article, computer vision are something that can “create real­time reports about people’s identities, locations, gestural movements, facial expressions, gait characteristics, gaze directions, and other characteristics”. Whereas, in my project, I also use potentiometers which can be controlled by people, but can’t observe people. Anyway, I’m glad to see “the use of computer vision techniques increasingly incorporated into media ­art education, and into the creation of games, artworks and many other applications” and I’ll be willing to try computer vision in my future projects as well as other aspects of my live.

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.

Project Title

Ball of Confusion

Our final project is adapted from the well-known video game Super Mario, where players control Mario to gain coins and avoid all kinds of monsters. However, in our project, instead of avoiding, we expect our audience to initially collect the bad stuffs-problems in the world (such as global warming, gap between the rich and the poor, discrimination of gender/race, wars in some developing countries and so on), meaning that when faced with those problems, we exert ourselves to solve them instead of ignoring them. This adaption may be confusing at first for our audience, so that’s why we use “confusion” in our title. Also, I really like Citlaly’s idea of a ball as our character which represents everyone in the world, genderless, sexless, and raceless.

Project Statement of Purpose

As is mentioned above, our project is a Mario-like game, but more than just a game. Nowadays, although the world is developing and improving quickly and as a citizen living in the global village, everything goes well in my life, there’re actually many other people living in hot water every day. Because we don’t live in the same environment as theirs, we can’t always have empathy on them. So our fundamental purpose is to let people know more about the dark side of our globe and inspire them to make a difference to the world. Our targeted audience are all people in the world especially teenagers, who are the hope of the human future. 

Project Plan

I and my partner decide to use serial communication in our project, where we attach several vibration sensors to a wooden platform so that when a player jump slightly or stomp heavily, they’ll sense that in Arduino, then send it to processing and show that on the screen at last. So on the screen we can see the circle moving up or down over the wall to catch those bad stuffs. And the important part is that when you catch one, a card will pop up with picture, introduction, data, etc. for you to read. And the moment you catch all of them, a picture of world peace will pop up in the end. We decide to start our work on the coding part this Friday and finish it before user test session. However, I’m worried about it because there’re so many problems, one of them I am thinking of now is that what if the ball fall into the blank space, does it mean “game over”, and the height of one jump and so on. There is a large possibility that we’ll have to give up of our former plans and change it to other things or simplify it, but, anyway, we’ll try our best to do this project.

Context and Significance

My preparatory research and analysis of interaction inspires our proposal a lot. An important part of my definition of interaction is that it shouldn’t be fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different versions. So in this project, we will reduce the limitations which restrain the input or output part compared to my midterm project. Also, after comparing the two projects I found in Youtube(The mood reflecting floor- interaction design project and Arduino-interactive project (origami)), I find that a good purpose is significantly important for a project apart from the aesthetic value, so again, I want to emphasize the humanism connotation in our project, that’s its core and uniqueness.