Part 1 – Other Member’s Proposals
1 – Celine’s Proposal
The first proposal I received was one about an escape room. This escape room was planned to act as a metaphor for the stress and anxiety faced by the majority of university students. As this project was still in the planning stages, much of the feedback given was towards the implementation of the project. The advice I gave was related to the design of the project, and how the group could use a combination of audio and visuals to mimic an escape room. Along with this, the members in our discussion group collaborated to help come up with what system of interaction would be the best for this project. Originally, the project was planned to have a code you enter to break through, but we offered suggestions such as making a sequence game to “unlock” yourself from the room. Moreover, our group was also concerned about making this project too stressful or scary, so we came up with more suggestions on how to avoid this. Most of this discussion was about how difficult the game should be or what the audio/visuals should be like. As the project has an educational basis, we thought about showing the reasoning behind the project once the user escapes the room.
2 – Karen’s Proposal
The second project which was presented was “Pickmon – Pick your own Pokemon.” This is a group project which intends to create a system of interaction which will give a user a pokemon based on their heart rate. Just by reading the proposal, it was difficult to tell what the system of interaction was, as it was described to just be something where you measure your heart rate and get a result. Therefore, as improvement, we suggested putting together a short quiz that players take to make the results more personal. However, this could still be seen as uneventful, so another group member suggested creating a battle mode based on your heartbeat (eg. if your heart rate is higher, you win the battle). I found this to be a great suggestion which would greatly elevate the project.
3 – Sharon’s Proposal
Lastly, the other proposal received was a project based on the Sichuan tradition of mask-changing. Their proposal was to create an interface where they would use a webcam along with openCV to place a sichuan mask on the user’s face, then the user could press the button to switch the mask. Personally, I feel that the button interaction is boring and that the project could be improved if they use hand motions to change the mask. Other group members also suggested adding music and changing the system of interaction. All things aside, I appreciate that this idea is based off of a cultural tradition, which makes the project more meaningful and unique.
In terms of my understanding of interaction, I would not say that my definition has changed, but I feel that I now have a greater understanding of what higher levels of interaction may look like, and how they can be employed creatively. I also found that I have an improved understanding of the ways in which we interact with machines and how interactive systems are employed throughout our daily lives.
Part 2 – My Proposal & Feedback
For my project, the majority of the feedback had to do with the scope and the environment of my project. As we only have a short amount of time to complete the final projects, the other group members warned that if there were too many choices within my game, it would become to difficult to build in the allotted time. Aside from this, the other suggestion I received was in regards to the audio/visuals of the project. According to my group, I felt that the least successful part of my proposal was explaining what the story behind my project is. As I am working in a group for my project, and my partner had written a story to be used, I felt that my group members were a bit confused as to what the content of my project would be. I feel that my reasoning for using audio in my project was the most successful part of my proposal. While I am still unsure what the story content of my project will be, through the feedback of my group, I found that my idea of a storytelling game was very well-received. Most of the feedback I received were on things that I was expecting to get feedback on, so I will be taking this into account while building my project. On top of this, a group member also mentioned that my project could be modeled similarly to text-based games which were popular in the early history of video games. Having played these types of games before, I really enjoyed this suggestion and can see how it can be implemented within my project.