Week 9 Interactive Prototype II Progress & Changes

In this week, I’m keep working on creating a game control board, also improve some elements of game interface.

According to the previous control board design, I cut the button in half, and use different side to connect the Makey Makey “Key” ports and “EARTH”port, so when user touch the button and make connection between two different sides, therefore, user can control game object by touching combination of buttons on the control board.  However, there is one problem may influence the button connection, because if users only touch one side of the button (left side or right side), then the “Key” ports would unable to connect to the“EARTH”port, then the connection failed.

Loss of control function is a big issue, so I found another way that can prevent this problem. I redesign the button shape, make two sides interlaced, so whether users touch either side of button, the control board can always build connection between two ports.

 Interlace two sides

User can touch each side

For the interface improvement, I added one new feature which is display the currently pressed keys to players. The purpose of this function is to help users to know which keys they are pressing, so they don’t need to spend time to check whether they press the correct keys.

For the coding, I create a private variable GameObject which is the key images, then hide the object, so after user press the keys, the corresponding image objects will display.

Week 8 Physical Interaction Prototype Design

In this week, I have been inspired by some example of alternate modes of interaction, so I begin to design my concept controller which is the control board. The original idea is about creating a control board which contain six buttons, two players follow the key combination instructions and use their fingers to push buttons and then control the movement of each Pac-man.

According to the last interactive prototype test, some users give me a valuable feedback which is don’t make the control too complex for the player, so for the interactive prototype II, I will only test two combinations for each player. Moreover, Makey Makey only support 6 keys (W, A, S, D, F, G) and up, down, left, right, mouse left click and mouse right click, so I decide to use five keys set the key combinations (go up: W+A, go down：S+D, go left：A+F, go right：D+F), because this combination is more simple and easy to understand.

Makey Makey keys&mouse

    Makey Makey keys  

 First step is preparing tools.

Tools:

Copper Foil Tape: I will use this to create buttons, because I don’t want player feel the buttons are hard to push when they play finger twister, so they actually don’t need to push the buttons, all they need to do is touch them lightly.

Cardboard: this card board will become the control board base, all buttons will place onto the smooth side, other lines will be placed on the back side.

Other tools: tape, scissors, tinfoil (for create “wire”)

Plan:

The plan is cut cardboard and creating a base board, then cut Copper Foil Tape into five circles with equal size, also cut the circles in half. After that, paste the circles on the cardboard, and drill two holes that the wire can connect the button through these holes. All circles left side will connect to the Makey Makey’s “EARTH” port, and right side will connect to each key port. 

Buttons & connections 

The interaction is that player can touch the button, then the connection create by players finger, the Makey Makey  through these wires to identify which keys have been pushed ,  then feed back to the game interface.

Interaction

The prototype progress:

This week，i create five buttons and some wires connection, may finished all the connection next week.

Control board front side (buttons)

Control board back side (wires)

Week 8 Alternate Modes of Interaction

In this week’s lecture, we were discussed about alternate modes of interaction, include tangible interaction, embodied interaction and augmented reality. The one example “super angry birds” is similar with my concept, we both intend to use physical & non-traditional method to implement the interaction between game and players. The super angry birds’ designer considered how to use related control to simulate the slingshot, so one of the most compelling things about this interaction method is it can provide a better sense of reality, player can feel they throwing these birds. For my concept, I also intend to create an interesting way to let user control the Pac-man game by interact with a physical non-traditional method which is the control board.  

 

Super Angry Birds

And then, we discussed about some non-traditional physical interactions that could be implemented for Email, Twitter, and Super Mario Bros. 

Email:

• For the new mail alert, when user waiting some emails, the notification become important, one possible physical interactions could be a wearable shaking device which can let user know when a new email coming.

 

• For send an email, user sometimes want send an email with hand write letter and attached file, so a physical device that allow users can all files and send digital version by a simple click.

• For delete an email, when people want destroy a junk mail or some mail that contain sensitive information, they usually choose delete the email permanently, so a device that allow user tore up the physical letter, then the related digital version also destroy automatically.

• For manage mail box, user can store physical mails into filing cabinet, if they want to check the email, they can plug the physical mails into the device and all related mail history will display.

• For switch different mail box, some actual mailboxes – it could be set beside your bed that lights up in different colours for different kinds of emails.

Twitter:

• For message notification, there is a bird nest, it can be set on your desk with a piece of spring, when a new message come, the bird will be ejected from the nest and sweet to remind you.

• for message passing, there is a bird device that can read text message from twitter to users, and users can speak to the bird and put the bird back to its nest to post your tweet or respond.

• For display some visual message, there is a mini projector in bird mouth, so any pictures from Twitter can be projected on a desk, windows or somewhere else.

• Tab the bird’s head to like the post and switch its head for favourites.

Week7 Lecture: Designing Questions For Testing

In this week, we learned how to make proper user-testing questions. So I revisit my survey from the video prototype, and try to find out what needs to be improved.

Video prototype survey:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfANp3qkTEGMpC7uydjziiqdNubToW-wataoevCmJxwZw2KKQ/viewform

Firstly, my survey questions composed of both qualitative question and quantitative question. There are two types of quantitative questions, one is a closed question which is “Do you like the way of interacting with this game?” and give the selections “yes” and “no”. according to the lecture, I think this question should change to a “Likert Scale” question, because it’s looking for user’s attitudes rather than collect fixed range of data. The second quantitative question is “Did you get what was the initial problem?” and this is a “Likert Scale” question, I think this question is on the right direction, because I want to know people whether understand the problem that my concept tries to solved.

quantitative question (wrong format)

Likert Scale question

Secondly, there is a qualitative question problem.  The problem is that there are lots of compound question within my survey. For example, one question is “First impression? & How do you think this game? (boring, fun?)”, it’s looks like I’m trying to collect different answers from one question, so a possible solution is that split the question into two different questions, one is ask user’s first impression, another is look like “how do you feel when playing this game?”.

Compound quesiton

Overall,  there are some rules for design qualitative questions  and quantitative questions. For the quantitative question,  it must designed as closed question, and the answers range should be fixed. If you want to collect user's attitudes, then use "Lukert  Scale" to explore the answers. For the qualitative question, we must avoid leading or compound questions, sometimes designers can easily make a compound question because they want collect related answers from different direction.

Week7 Prac B : Interactive Prototype Test

Before testing session, I prepared nine questions survey which created by “google form”, the purpose of this survey is for collect feedback information from different users. I also prepared three tasks, users need to finish each task one by one, these tasks were designed for two purposes.

Firstly, these tasks can help user gradually familiar with the game, because not all of them saw my video prototype before, and also some users may not even know much about the Pac-man game. Secondly, user can provide some feedbacks for specific aspect of concept by follow the tasks. For example, I want to know how is the Pac-man movement, then I ask user to finish a task like move Pac-man up, down, left and right.    

The tasks for testing interactive prototype I:

l  Task 1: Move your Pac-man up, down, left and right.

l  Task 2: Eat one big Pac-dot.

l  Task 3: Eat the Pac-dots as many as you can, and try to get more scores than another player.

*reset the game after complete each task.

Feedbacks from test session:

Week 6 CRC Card & Project Progress

This week lecture was looking more at coding aspect, and show us one technique for identify your concept class which is class responsibility and collaboration cards. Each card presents an individual class and include its responsibilities and its collaborators.

Pacman

Responsibilities:

Move-up

Move-down

Move-left

Move-right

Eat Pac-dots

Collaborators:

Pac-dot

Wall

In Class Card

Pac-dot

Responsibilities:

Eaten by Pacman

Collaborators:

Pacman

In Class Card

Wall

Responsibilities:

Detect Pacman

Hit by Pacman

Collaborators:

Pacman

In Class Card

Score

Responsibilities:

Detect Pac-dots

Add score

Collaborators:

Pacman

Pac-dots

In Class Card

This week's progress:

I create a new function that can destroy objects,so it's allow me to make the Pac-dots disappear when Pacman touch them. i attach this script to the Pac-man object, so Pacman can eat Pac-dots now.

another new function is about scores, this script give each player a initial score (playerscore=0) and add scores, then call this function when Pacman eat dots. next week i will focus on the UI part,which is display scores and instructions on the screen.