Category: Young

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You Are the Superhero! – Zhiqiu Wang(Eugene) – Young

Project Title: You Are the Superhero!

Partner: Kaycee

Instructor: Young

The learning process of IMA has come to an end by now. In this last documentation I would like to talk about the process of making my final project “You Are the Superhero!” with my partner Kaycee.

Last semester, when I was wandering around the IMA Final show, I saw my friends showing games made by themselves with their own knowledge after the one-semester IMA learning experience. I have made up my mind that I will make my own game next semester. So, I didn’t hesitate what to make when the final project was assigned. And as a huge fan of Marvel Studio, the movie of The Avengers: End Game inspired me. Since both my partner Kaycee and I love this movie, we quickly agreed on making this game not only to express our own understanding of interactive but also to show our respect to the masterpiece.

The building process at first is quite hard. I was mainly responsible for the coding part while the coding of this interactive game is actually quite difficult for me since it includes many coding skills that I didn’t know. Kaycee and I discussed a lot and turn to many Professors, friends and professionals for help. I personally learnt a lot during this coding process because it is the first time for me to code a project completely based on my own idea and design which means everything has no guidance and starts from zero. And Kaycee spent most of her time on the physical design including connecting the arduino and the appearance box and buttons. And the first demo of our project took us about 2 weeks and was presented in class. The peer review session gave us plenty of constructive ideas and inspiration. For example, the size of the button is not user-friendly and how we can enrich the interaction of our project. And through user test, we found out that the game is a bit unfair since the three superheroes can fire at the same time which makes it too difficult for the Thanos player to win. And the one professor suggest that the users may not understand how the project works so it will be better if the instruction can be written on the starting page. 

We also took the advice of our classmates that to make our project more interactive by adding a voice sensor to control ironman. This process also took us a very long time because it is quite difficult to adjust the proper sensitivity of the microphone. After a lot of user tests and our own experience, we decide to make it 95 db considering the noisy environment of IMA show that day. During the whole process, my partner and I cooperated very well and helped each other a lot, giving each other help and ideas. There is also regret in our final project. Because of the time limit, we gave up our plan of using cameras and filters as a reward in the end of the game by changing the winner’s face into the specific character. 

In a nutshell, the process of producing my final project is a very precious experience. This experience and the whole IMA course has taught me so much, not only about the meaning Interaction but the fun of coding and creating something new and interesting. I will cherish my learning experience in the bottom of my heart and it will definitely benefit me a lot in the foreseeable future.

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Ball of Confusion-Olivia Zhou-Young

    • 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

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Final Post by Kaycee

Project Title: You Are the Superhero!

Partner: Eugene

Instructor: Young

At first, we set all three heroes controlled by buttons. However, after the user test, we found that the game was too unfair for the villain to win because the user who controls the superheroes can simply press all three buttons and Thanos would have little chance to escape. Therefore, we replaced the middle button with a voice sensor. When the db it detected exceeds 95, the middle hero would shoot.  Because the voice sensor was quite small and user had to bend over to reach it, I put the voice sensor in a prop microphone. For the prop microphone, I used plastic because this material could be easily to buckle and tailor. A metallic microphone or a 3D print microphone were also two options for us. However, after screening, we still thought that plastic microphone was the best option because the voice sensor had to be sticked on the top inside of the microphone to better capture the voice from the user. And both metallic microphone and 3D print microphone were too hard for the scissors to cut to put the voice sensor inside. Another adjustment we made according to the user test was changing the size of the buttons.at first, we used the small buttons in the kit and they were hard to reach on the breadboard because of the dense jumper cables. Therefore, we borrowed two white buttons, whose radius was approximately 2 centimeters to better tailor to the hand size of the users.

The most significant steps in our production process was coding. We met problems mainly in communication between me and my partner. Because coding was a relatively subjective process and needed to continuously referring back to the previous part. Each one of us had a coding system and different ways to set variables in our mind and let my partner to understand the part of the code the you wrote was actually difficult and time-consuming. We also met difficulties in the process of producing the device. We planned to make two boxes, one was for the user to control the villain and the other was for another user to control the three superheroes. Because joystick was everything that user needed to move the villain, so I made a small cubes with side length of 10 centimeters, using the laser cut. I left a circle on the top of the box to let the joystick went through and a square on one side of the box to let jumper cables went through. However, in the user test, we found the problem that the jumper cable was not stable if only use the double-sided tape to stick it on the top from the inside. If the user pressed hard, the joystick would fall. So I cut some small square of cardboard and put them inside the box to support the joystick.

The main goal of our project is to provide a relaxes for the lovers of this series in their leisure time. Our intended audience is the young generation who favors the Marvel series movies and also game lovers. And this sort of shooting game exercise their responsiveness. In my opinion, the project aligns with my definition of interaction, which is two or more objects listen, understand and respond to each other. The project has all these three steps. When the user pushes the button, the computer analyzes the circuit and the code to run the correct animation and produce the effect. However, it is not only a one-way interaction. The user also has to observe the position of the villain so as to hit it precisely and defeat him as soon as possible. When it comes to what doesn’t align with my definition of interaction, I think the way to interact in this project is not plural enough, with only two ways which are pressing and shouting. It also doesn’t embody my opinion of a strong interactive project, which requires real-time interaction. If I had more time, I would add a face detect function in the end of the game. If the superheroes win, the camera will capture the user’s face and put it on the top of a costume of one of the three superheroes. And if the Thanos wins, the user will also “wear” like Thanos. This function will make the interaction in my project more real-time. From the process of producing my final project, I gained a lot, not only in the academic aspect,, but also the way to corporate with a partner. My awareness of the importance of a rational division of labor was developed and this can benefit me in my future way of academic learning.

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Navigate in Space – Yihan Meng (Ellie) – Young

In this documentation, I would like to introduce my process of making my final project “Navigate in Space” by analyzing the following parts: designing, fabricating and improving. I would also talk about how this project has motivated me in my learning journey and strengthened my capability in this course.

At the start point of determining the content of my final project, I made the decision to code a game, which could allow more entertaining elements and show my understanding of “interaction”. I first designed my game on a piece of scratch paper, following my idea of making something concerning the topic of “space” with a significant implication. I consider it as the most important stage of producing my project since some of the core ideas and key steps were designed at this point. Firstly, I decided that I would like my users to interact with my project as if they were actually controlling a spaceship. This thought inspired me in designing and completing some of the most attractive parts in my project, such as attaching the 3D-print model to the joystick and designing a first-person perspective view to get players better involved. For the physical part, I chose to make a box using MakerCase with a hole to place joystick since it could both be more realistic for me to produce and easier for players to get started with. I thought about replacing the joystick with some other more interesting sensors like infrared sensors or distance sensors. However, I gave them up due to two reason — the first one was that due to the complexity of those sensors, I kept meeting difficulties when dealing with them and it lagged me behind my original plan. The second reason was that considering the actual control method of planes, using complex sensors actually reduce players’ feeling of “driving” a spaceship. In comparison, the joystick served a better purpose.

After all the ideas were settled, I started to produce my project by coding and making physical objects at the same time. The physical part was easier for me to complete since I already had a picture of what it would be like and there were not many problems coming up except that 3D-print took much longer time than I had expected. The coding part, however, was a huge problem for me. Without previous experience in programming, I found it hard to realize my ideas on the game. For instance, two major problems that I spent a lot of time working on was the sense of the stone “approaching” and how to turn the stone into a boom the instance it “hits” the spaceship. But the toughest one was definitely the continuous appearance of the stone, on which I spent more than 10 hours simply just working on adjusting the figure and to get it disappeared at the proper time. During my producing procedure, the recitation for peer review and user-testing helped me a lot in improving my project, especially the latter. During the user-testing session, I got a lot of feedback that helped me form a better idea on how to conduct the background story in a more player-friendly way by reducing the words that need to be read but adding a video that set up the background scene. Besides, my friends’ opinions on my project also gave me some hints. My idea of printing a globe that could be lit when the “new habitable planet” is found was inspired by one of my friend’s particular interest on the appearance of the new planet and his desire to see some physical change to further approve his success. According to the result in my live demo in presentation and the IMA Show, these measures all worked extremely effective.

 

My goals of the final project were to make a game that allows people to have a sense of controlling a spaceship, navigating in the space while at the same time complete a mission. From my perspective, my project aligns perfectly with my definition of “interaction”. By involving the background of resources running out, I intend to raise people’s awareness in protecting the environment, which concerns ideological morality; the project repetitively give back information to motivate the player to continue the process of “exploring”; also, by moving the background image and stones to the opposite direction as the user controls, it gives visual signals that could be sensed by the user, thus creating a seemingly first-person perspective game. Judging from the result in IMA Show, it could be concluded that My audience is highly engaged with my project, however, since achieving the final goal — arriving at the new planet is unexpectedly difficult for the players, it somehow could reduce their interest and motivation in continuously playing and interacting with the project. If I have more time, I would make adjustments to the speed of the stones’ approaching and consider adding more stones at the same time. Also, I will work more on the “navigator” window in the corner to add to the aesthetics of the project. More importantly, I would also consider adding a button(or pedal) to “speed up” and another to slow down so that the experience could feel more real and interesting. Through this individual final project, my coding skills are improved greatly with more understanding of how the language works. I also learned to make overall planning and make use of my time more effectively. Just like my midterm project, I realize how accessibility is important for the users and moreover, how hard it is to design a game(even just a simple one). My understanding of “visualize” is expanded through producing my final project and it greatly contributes to my other learning process like analyzing the works on cartography. My original thought on this game-like project was more than just a simple game. Just as I stated in my presentation, the university is the most mysterious thing people are working on and it is important to get more people, especially the next generation, interested in our research on the space. Such system of “experiencing the universe”, if combined with new technologies like VR, it could serve as a tool to educate young kids about the charm of the universe and inspire them to explore the secrets of it. The result in IMA Show that a lot of kids showed great interest in playing this game over and over again could prove this point. It could also be applied to the research area in many cases like determining the relative location of stars. It could help us form a better relationship with the universe and further our understanding of it.

Image:

Video:

Code(Processing):<script src=”https://gist.github.com/Ellie-1809/3edc2bc5969e827a7e3fa35bcf650a82.js”></script>

Code(Arduino):<script src=”https://gist.github.com/Ellie-1809/cfdc1cabfd9614bba079105d969dcb7e.js”></script>

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Break Free – Final Project – Celine Yu

Project Name: Break Free

Partner: Kenneth Wang

Professor: Young

Conception and Design 

My Partner, Kenneth and I decided that for this project, we would resemble it after the popular game genre known as escape rooms. We were especially intrigued by how within its nature, Escape Rooms are constantly asking for input from the users involved. Kenneth and I knew that we wanted our users to continuously place input,  and found that it would be interesting for the users to interact with the project by navigating its interface and deciphering all of its clues and hints in order to reach its goals. The project would then process the user’s information and input and then create its own input to help the user complete the game, together they would be working towards a common goal: escape from the room.  We wanted the room to be easily recognizable and easily understood as to where the end goal should be, which is why we only created one room instead of multiple. we wanted the user to familiarise themselves with the room and not to confuse themselves with multiple aspects and attributes. the next decision we accounted for on behalf of the user’s interaction with the project was the physical gameplay. I designed the box through illustrator and spent a lot of time decorating the box to make it fit the criteria of the project, which I did by creating a bunch of bars around the box to resemble those of jail cells. In my intentions, this design would further the objectives we wish to convey: a restrictive environment. We then purchased multiple buttons, joysticks, and potentiometers off of the internet and then borrowed LEDs from the equipment room to use atop of the main controller for the game, which is the box. These components proved to be the best for our project for they gave users a reminiscent feeling of video game controllers which automatically told the user that the project was indeed a video game that they could interact with. Another option was simply just using the computer’s keyboard and mouse for the user to interact with the interface, but we rejected that idea because we thought that it would be inferior, redundant and boring for the user to just use the keyboard and mouse to solve the game.

Fabrication and Production

In the beginning, Kenneth and I had a lot of difficulty with trying to understand what we wanted to do for this Final Project. For the midterm, we had created a game that did not require any sort of strategizing or deep thinking, and so we wanted to change that this time around. As I was put in charge of the designing process for the project, I put a lot of effort and attention into the physical appearance of the project, which includes the box as well as the art for the Escape room. Creating the box took a few times to get used to, but because of my previous experience from the last project, I was able to minimize my trials with the fabrication lab. I wanted the design to be sleek and minimal so that it would appear clean and easy to understand for the user. Then, I went on to creating art for the project. Each picture and image found within the project was hand drawn by myself through applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop and Procreate on my iPad. It wasn’t until during the drawing process that I had familiarised myself with the Procreate app. I had to watch several videos and tutorials on the internet in order to understand the complete interface of the application, only after that, did I feel comfortable with creating my own pieces of art.

Kenneth and I had to discuss and brainstorm a lot of aspects to the design because we wanted it to be perfect and congruent. There are times where agree with another as well as disagreed, which I believe only created a better outcome in the end. There are many times where I would have to draw for 5 to 6 hours a day, which I did not entirely mind because I was doing it to create a better project for both my partner and I. For the user testing, we received a lot of compliments but also a lot of suggestions and worries for the rest. We were told that the game was kind of confusing due to the lack of instructions,  the users believed that if we were to add simple instructions that were minimal and did not distract them from the game, then the project would benefit overall.

To conform to these suggestions, I added symbols and labels to the items found on top of the box so that they would be easier to locate. Kenneth then added instructions to the game through forms of animation that would direct the user through the interface. We also incorporated newly added LEDs to the box so that they could correspond to the codes and hints that we created throughout the game, which furthermore helped the user understand the game’s intentions and goals. Honestly, I do believe the suggestions helped us in creating a better project and so they were effective as well.

Conclusions

The goal of this final project is to create a fascinating interface or game that reflects our ideals of interactive devices. To Kenneth and I, we believe that interaction details a dynamic relationship between two or more users who continuously place input into one another depending on the other’s output, and of course, they must work towards a common goal. In our project, the user is working to understand the rooms’ hints in order to decipher them and discover a clue that allows the character to escape from the final room. The interface of the room is then processing the input that the user places into it, processes it, and then creates it’s on output that would help the user to reach the final goal. For the most part, I believe that the final project perfectly aligns with our definition of interaction, but I do believe that there could be a misunderstanding of a reaction instead of interaction. We were thankful and in relief that with user testing and our final project presentation, the volunteers perfectly interacted with the project as to how we had planned.  I do wish if we had the luxury of time, that we could create more complex levels and rooms for the user to go through, this would lengthen the overall project also raise even more awareness to the issue we had chosen. We’ve learned, how much thinking and designing must go into the project in order to create a fully useful device. We should have implemented different aspects such as sound effects and a longer story in order to deepen the project’s meaning. I believe that teamwork is super important in this aspect and communication as well, I am grateful to have worked with Kenneth this time around for the final project.

With this Project,  we wanted our goal to be that of raising awareness on the stress and mental illnesses that arise within college students and in academic environments. We both understand that is it is extremely difficult and even almost impossible to cure someone of these illnesses through a simple project like this, but we wish to at least raise awareness of the growing issue. We conducted an immense amount of research in information in order to back up our claims and goals. We wanted to turn the awareness issue into the form of a game in order to make it seem more interesting, and for it to reach out to even more users in a more meaningful way. We believe that these people, students, and all users should care because it affects all of them, whether or not the mental illness is chronic or subtle, it is a part of us that should not be ignored.