Lilyzone
This project is an interactive art installation. They intend to create water lilies out of plastic for users to interact with. The interaction is mainly through sticking something inside the water lilies to play sounds of a “bianzhong” and other traditional Chinese music/sounds for users to experience a traditional Chinese cultural atmosphere. Some of the feedback we gave was that maybe instead of a sticking something into the water lilies, there could be other ways to trigger the sounds. It would be more intuitive if the sounds played when the user places the water lilies on water. We also suggested the possibility of incorporating a pressure or distance sensor instead.
Your Pet Plant
This project aims to create a realization and emphasis that plants are also living creatures and the relationship between humans and plants need to be improved especially in consideration of the detrimental environmental issues the world is facing today. The idea is to have a plant in Processing that corresponds with a physical model of the plant. Whenever the user touches certain parts of the physical plant, there will be some kind of feedback, for example a laughter, from the plant in Processing to show that the plant has a personality. Some of the feedback we gave was that maybe instead of showing a plant in Processing, there could be something else since there is already a physical model of the plant that the user is interacting with.
E-Maze
This project is a game that’s a maze on Processing in which the user controls a ball on Processing through a game-like controller with Arduino. The path that the ball passes through will be painted with colors and once the user colors all the path in the maze, they will pass the level. Some suggestions we gave was that instead of just colors on the maze trail, maybe it would be more intriguing for the users if an image was revealed instead. So instead of just colors, the users would be moving the ball throughout the maze path to reveal the image. This way, it creates more of an incentive for the users to want to play and pass the game.
I found it intriguing how most of these projects were not just focused on interaction between people but more of creating an experience or drawing attention to a world issue. All of these projects definitely align with my definition of interaction because they all intend to create strong emotional feelings from the user through the experience. After hearing about all these project ideas just makes me realize that there are so many ways to utilize technology not just through practical use but also to create meaningful or sometimes even just simple, fun experience that connects a person to the world or other people around them.
Feedback I received
- Better to have just either single player, or two player
- if Two player was an option in addition to one player why would the user want to play with someone else, what is the motivation behind it
- if it’s just one player then it’s also a bit boring if all the user is doing is pressing the same colored button to match the one on the screen
- if the physical keys are bigger in size then when two players play the notes will become chords so then one person can’t play that many chords at once, so then there has to be more than one person playing
I do think that it makes more sense to just focus on one or multiplayer aspect. I think my incentive for having it as an option was not strong enough. I’m also thinking of integrating the idea to make the physical keys larger so that one person won’t be able to hit all the keys at once if more than two appear on the screen.