Final Project Essay – Julie Huang – Marcela

Final Project Essay

Partner: Justin Wu

Project Title: Tip Tap Snap

Project Statement of Purpose 

Basing our project off of a common passion of simply having a good time, Justin and I came to the conclusion of incorporating music (what else makes you want to get up and groove?) into a game that caters to and resonates with a wide range of users. We drew inspiration for our project from games like “Tap Tap Revolution” and “Guitar Hero” and wanted to build off both these amazing games to create something that doesn’t require much technical equipment, but still allows the user to interact with a physical object. Our project strives to bring together fun aspects of music and coordination to create an entertaining experience for users that just want to chill and have a good time.

Project Plan 

The goal of our project is to provide users with a fun gaming experience that brings together musical components, hand-eye coordination, and an added surprise factor. The combination of these aspects bring forth a enjoyable challenge that attracts people to want to continue playing. To create this project, we plan to fabricate a physical game box that connects Arduino to Processing. On top of our box, we plan to have three different colored buttons that correspond to the colors displayed on the screen. When the button is pressed down, a pressure sensor will be triggered and the corresponding color line on the screen will glow to create an obvious indication that the button has been pressed, giving the user feedback. When the pressure on the button is lifted, the corresponding color line will stop glowing. On the screen of the computer, we plan to use Processing to code a main page with different songs that display different lengthed colored lines in a specific order according to the song’s notes/tones. To emphasize with the user, we want to choose songs that has catchy tunes and everyone knows of. During the game process, we plan to have a corresponding accuracy percentage that gives the user feedback on how accurate the user was able to coordinate the buttons to the color lines on the screen, creating a scoring system. At the moment the song ends, we plan to have a camera capture a picture of the user to bring forth an additional aspect of fun. We also plan to have an overall accuracy percentage that allows users to compare with other users and influences them to continue playing until they reach a perfect 100% score. If the user receives an above 80% score, the user is given the option to advance onto the next song.

Our project plan for the following weeks is to begin with a sketch model that represents our general idea for the project and can help us reflect our final goal in our designing process. Once we have a mockup design on paper of the physical components of our project, we then plan to choose two songs or tunes that a majority of people know. By April 28, we hope to finish the ideation process, and can begin to move onto fabrication of the box and Processing with Arduino. By May 5, we hope to have Arduino set-up within the box in accordance to the code written within Processing. From here, we want to implement user testing to get feedback on how to improve our project and to make it more user friendly. We feel that this is a very important aspect of our project process because we learned from our Midterm project that some of the most important improvements we made were from the suggestions given by our peers during user-testing. That next week until the IMA show, we plan to implement feedback into our project and develop our final project.

Context and Significance 

After conducting preparatory research to find inspiration and help shape my definition of interaction, I found myself most intrigued by the projects that embodied some kind of deeper meaning that resonated with the user. However, through this research and the general outcome of our Midterm project, I realized that the trade off of diving into something specific is that the connection generated is very subjective to each person’s individual experience and preferences, meaning that the project would have more of an impact on some people over others. So, I challenged myself to develop an idea that could resonate with a broader audience. This is what led me to reflect back upon distinctive games in my childhood that seemed to be very popular. I stumbled upon games like Tap Tap Revolution, the most downloaded free game app from the App Store in 2008, and games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. At some point in our lives, we have been exposed to musical songs, tones, or jingles. As a baby, we’ve heard a wide range of nursery songs (ie. Twinkle Twinkle, Old Mcdonald, etc). From exposure to the digital age, through TV ads or being in stores we’ve heard a number of popular songs. Living in Shanghai for long enough, I have come to recognize the Family Mart door jingle. Music and tones are deeply integrated in our daily lives, even if we don’t fully recognize it. So, when I discovered Light Barrier, by Kimchi and Chips, I was inspired to incorporate some aspect of music in my final project. However, while I was in awe with Breaking the Surface, I realized that this project may only resonate deeply with a distinctive group of people that shares the common curiosity of the sea. This led my thinking process for my final project to create something that relates to a wider group of people. And what relates on a broader scale other than music? In addition, I really connected to the game Hit Me!, where two people try and hit a button on each other’s helmet and when one person finally does, the helmet takes a picture of that person in that exact moment. I thought this aspect really

My project proposal covers the general idea of my definition of interaction. Our project allows a continuous relationship between the user, computer, and game box that is composed by verbal feedback of music, physical feedback of the button and the computer screen, and emotional feedback through the indication of how you feeling when you play the game (ie. you may think the game is fun because you are good at accurately pressing the buttons in accordance to the screen). Through the emotional connection, this echos a personal connection that drives the relationship to be pursued further. If the user really enjoys this game or the song we’ve selected, the meaning of the interaction of this game brings is stronger. However, if the user has not developed a prior connection to the song (ie user does not know the song), the interaction connection may not be as strong as someone who recognizes the song.

While there are a lot of games like this out in the world already, both on the digital app market or as games children can play, our project can be set up and integrated into the most space. All you need to have is your computer and our game box. All existing products are only based in an app and don’t have an additional physical component, or requires a very specific musical instrument, but our project utilizes the basic products we have in our daily life and adds an additional factor of fun: a camera that snaps a picture of your face at the end of the song, when the difficulty raises and you see your accuracy score.

Our project is intended for anyone who wants to have a good time, but don’t want to spend as much money to purchase a game station. It brings together people to have fun together and try and beat the game. It contains special value because it is easily accessible, can be set up really anywhere, and has an additional factor that takes a picture of your face.

Ideally, in the future, to create a stronger feedback loop between the user and our game, we could create a larger pool of songs and engineer our game to generate songs that have more difficult order and length of lines. We could also engineer our game box to resemble something that is more consumer orientated. Once we do this, we could really begin to go onto the market and compete with existing products.

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