Final Project Essay by Karen Zhang

Project Title

“Pickmon”

“Pickmon” is derived from Pokémon. The title of the project is straightforward and clear for the users to know what to do. This project will help the user to identify which type of Pokémon you are more likely to own.

Project Statement of Purpose

The experience of curiosity and uncertainty made Anna and I start to think about divination. Then we start to brainstorm about this idea to make it more practical, we gradually developed this project of Pick your Pokémon. Our generation grows up by watching the cartoon, for me, Pokémon is still in my heart. Our project targets at a specific group of people who like Pokemon, or more broadly, who love interacting with cartoon characters. Children also love collecting things, such as stamps, cards, stones, and even insects. In Pokémon, different people also master different skills to control their own Pokémon, which can belong to different types (water type, fire type, electric type). In the novel series Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling also creates a magic school Hogwarts, which is divided into four houses, Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. And we are also inspired by the Sorting Hat, the hat will help you decide which house that you belong to. In reality, fans of Pokémon and Harry Potter are also eager to know which Pokémon they can own and what house they belong to.

Image result for the sorting hat
The Sorting Hat in Harry Potter

Project Plan

Our project is a process of matching between the user and the Pokémon. We plan to let the user touch the button of the Poké Ball, like the one shows here. We plan to have a heartbeat sensor on this button and somehow it can test the user’s heart rate to create our inputs (we are still designing this part and we plan to read the heartbeat from user’s finger). A list of questions will be given through Processing on the screen and definitely affect people’s heart rate. And we will use the variation of data to give feedback to the user which will indicate what type of Pokémon he is more likely to own. In the end, the image of the specific type of Pokémon will appear on the screen and a box will open to show your Pokémon, we may also 3D print Poké Balls.

Image result for Poké Ball

Context and Significance

In the previous research, I redefine “interaction” as human-centered experience with reward and a process of exploration with multiple and unexpected alternatives. For instance, the project Click Canvas is a highly interactive project made by Natthakit KIMBAB Kang, which provides multiple alternatives for users to explore and the user do not necessarily know what will come out in the next step. Furthermore, Anna and I really spend time reflecting on our last project, we strongly feel that we must add the “reward” part to our final project. And the processing of matching in our project fits into the new definition I give to interaction as an experience involved with curiosity and uncertainty.

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