The first project was a design helping people with negative mental state. It attempts to do so by asking users to wave their arms in the air to “touch” certain shapes in the image. Though it is an interesting idea, I think our computers don’t have the capacity of capturing real time images and processing them. In other words, the program will be very slow to run, which would negatively affect users’ experience interacting with the device. For other group members, they doubt whether waving the arm in the air could really improve their mental state. The project is interesting because of its background, which aims to help people mentally. It could create meaningful experience, because it has changed how users interact with a simple game, which makes the effect of the game not simple anymore.
The second project was a digitalized version of the battleship game. It is mainly about using the cannonball shot from the enemy to predict the position of the enemy’s boats. I haven’t played the physical battleship game before, but I think it might make everything easier through digitalization. My other group members think it would be too hard to digitalize the position of the boat. The most interesting part of this project is how it digitalize the whole design. Also because of the digitalization, the project could create significance.
The third project was a room escape game. Players would use the clues in the room to decrypt the key or password to go to the next room. I think it would be hard for them to achieve this project in the limited time, as it is a game involving complicated logic design, while remaining its playability. Other group members consider the interaction is not creative enough, for users would simply use joystick to control the character. This project is interesting for it narrowing the complicated, real-life game to a computer game. It could create meaningful experience, because it would enable users to experience room escape without going to a physical room.
The similarity among these projects is they are all using physical interaction to replace the usual way of interacting through keyboard and mouse, which would make a usual interaction new and special. It is somehow similar to my prior definition of interaction, which also considers interaction as a process not limited to keyboard input.
For my project, my group member, Nick first suggested me researching more on ocean debris and whales dying from debris. He also thinks the two-player mode could be cut down to one player only, because “we can’t understand what whales are thinking”. Nick also suggested we should think more in terms of how users interact. According to my group members, the most successful part of this project is the background setting, while the least successful part is the way users interact with my project. I do agree with their comments, for we indeed spent a lot of time thinking about the background of this game, while neglecting the way users would interact with. After receiving these feedbacks, I would, for sure, research more, think more about the game mechanism. In terms of improvements, instead of removing the whale, we would remove the human and make it a game about how the whale escapes the ocean debris. We would also consider other creative ways for users to interact with the project.