DECO7230 Digital Prototyping: 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.