Moon Quest
The first project that I’m interested in is Moon Quest by Ben Porter, which is a video game that procedurally generates its levels. This video game is very successful in creating interaction with the user since it does fit my initial definition of interaction, which is the object continuously reacts to the interactions of the user. As the user plays the game, the design of the level changes randomly. No two games would be the same with each other even if other players played the same level. After reading Ernest Edmonds article, I realized my initial definition of interaction would be considered as Dynamic-Interactive. However, I didn’t specify if I wanted my projects to be Dynamic-Interactive (Varying). Moon Quest would be considered as Dynamic-Interactive (Varying). I chose this specific project since I like the idea of taking a concept of a game that already exists and add an interaction that isn’t usually correlated with the game. The successful part about this project is that the project is able to have aspects of ‘sustaining’ and ‘relating’ type of engagement (which was defined by Ernest Edmonds) because the game always changes so the player will always want to go back to see what has changed in the future. I want to be able to keep long term engagement in my project as well.
Sound Playground
The other project that I’m interested in is the Sonic Playground created by Yuri Suzuki Design. This project provides a successful interactive experience because of its environment and flexibility of the interactions that can do with it. I chose this specific project because it fits the same type of project where you take something ordinary, like a playground, and then add another way of interacting with it – in this case it’s with sound. Children can go up to this project and the sounds they create will be manipulated by the artifacts in the project. Additionally, depending on where the listener is, they would also hear a different sound. This project would be considered to be Dynamic-Interactive (Passive). However, a weakness to this project is that the engagement is not long term since the interaction is passive. Also, the interaction is not Varying which makes it similar to my Group Project, which I see as a problem and doesn’t completely relate to my definition of interaction. But I think this would be an inspiration for me to create interaction in something ordinary.
For both of these projects, they have aspects of ‘attracting’ which is the easiest of the three types of engagement to have in a project. I feel like the ‘sustaining’ engagement is dependent on whether the project is varying or not because to sustain engagement, there must be constant change that isn’t predictable. However, creating long term engagement ‘relating’ isn’t as straightforward. Long term engagement requires a reason for the user to come back to the project which depends on the user. This is the type of engagement that that I want to learn how to implement in my project.
References:
https://www.creativeapplications.net/sound/sonic-playground-playful-acoustics-by-yuri-suzuki-design/