User Testing In Class Summary

Weakest link of my project

The difference between entertainment and education within a digital landscape.Would this idea of bridging digital play and physical play only appeal to the child? Parents are trying to avoid digital devices → my solution is to assist the child in using digital devices as a toy instead of just T.V → Interactive is key.

Strongest link of my project

Would be the fact that I am attempting to bring together both digital play and physical play into one interactive experience, The prototype (if it works as intended) is streamlined and easy to use. It will help the child to learn how to interact with more complicated digital interfaces.

User Testing Questions

_____ FOR PHYSICAL GAME ____ Goal: find out how they would change the current iteration

 

What would make this toy even better than it already is?

 

Would you like to be able to play with the toy on the (preferred mobile platform)

 

Do you think that any of your friends (at school if they go or at daycare) would also like this toy?

 

What would you make using the toy? (in the context of building blocks)

 

How would you put what you made onto your (preferred mobile platform)?

 

_____ FOR DIGITAL GAME _____ Goal: find out if the digital interaction is successful (child uses them in specified way) Goal 2: find out what they dislike (children are always honest)

 

Would you want to be friends with the characters (phrase using character names)?

 

What did you learn from this game?

 

Would you show this to your friends at (school / day care)?

 

Do you like the way your creations moves on the screen?

 

How would you like to play with what you made on (preferred mobile platform)?

Prototype Unity: Building Blocks

here is a video of a quick example of how I think that I want the building aspect of the app should look like from a basic point of view.

The blocks are “magnetic” like the real product will be

for the next prototype I want to take the object that is made in the “building” mode and add a rigidbody to it as a whole simulating that the player will now be able to play with what they have made.

Learning from this I now think that I want to create basic outlines / tasks to fill in with objects to make pre-designed objects that work as intended. This way there is a learning experience in the building aspect of the game.

 

FEATURE TRACKING
Feature Priority Goal First Step Status Obstacles Notes
Digtal Building Blocks 1 Digital interactivity Build protoype in Unity In progress Time lo-fi proof of concept
Physical Building Blocks 1 Physical Interactivity Build final blocks with wood In progress Material Costs Makes specific shape
Magentitc building blocks 2 Make step feature above magentic Make wooden blocks magnetic In progress Making it seamless Try to make it seamless
Digital Story telling 1 Tell a story with the game Write out a basic story to tell In progress Time Taking a childrens story telling class
Digital world 1 A world that the player interacts with Build in unity In progress Time
Digital world exploration 2 how are the user explores the world previous step In progress Time
Digital Scanning 3 scan physical toy into digital world The game In progress Technical skill
Physical Building Block designs 1 What the shapes of the building blocks Draw out design In progress Material Costs

What adjectives describe the feeling or approach?

Exciting constructive exploratory innovative cute interesting wonderful friendly tiny portable comprehensive

 

Tiny – the project is portable. The user is able to take blocks with them and play with them wherever they are, and if that isn’t possible then there is the digital alternative. From a digital standpoint the project is tiny because it needs to be. The demographic of the target audience prefers tiny from a mechanical perspective.

 

Comprehensive – the project needs to be easily comprehensible to the user as they are learning how to interact with both physical and digital objects at that stage in their life. In order for the project to be successful at that then you must make it comprehensive.

 

Wonderful – the project needs to produce a sense of wonder in both the parent and the user. I feel that the scanning element of this project give it that aspect of wonder. The fact that you can make pretend play into real play is that aspect of wonder.

Is your experience easy to use?

Most of my thesis is based around this concept. How do i present my app and toy to a user between ages 2 – 8. They don’t have the same experience with a digital landscape as users older than them. As of right now the experience doesn’t exist and is where most of the work needs to be done. I plan on looking at similar apps that present the experience successfully to a similar age group. Some of the apps that I have found are made by these guys. A few others include tinybop and Toca Boca.

Thesis 2 free write

Thesis 1 (blog) link:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mRV059tdR40N_nL5oKJnl348S1NFcwDY

 

Thesis 2: free write

 

My personal goals for thesis 2 is to develop the idea that I have created in thesis one into a real world product that can be marketed and interacted with. You can find information on my thesis 1 work In the linked file above.

 

Strengths:

Complete concept and business plan that will aid in the construction of the thesis. I know what I need to make, how i’m going to make it. A strong backing on why my thesis matters in the market that I am making for. Personally attached to the impact I want to have on that market.

 

Weaknesses:

There is little physical representation of my thesis. That is where this semester is going to be focused on. I need to have something people can interact with. Less research more making. I also need to hammer out a personal time frame of deadlines for the physical assets of my project.

 

Opportunities:

There are more opportunities for collaboration. I feel that I am technically capable to accomplish what I am setting out to do, however I am not the best at ever aspect(as much as I would like to be). Find people who have a similar interest of the theme of my thesis and talk with them, bounce ideas back and forth. Help each other create something that we can be proud of.

 

I need the most help in making sure that I stay on schedule. I am good at planning out my time, but meeting those deadlines become difficult as I expect a certain quality of work from myself that usually takes longer than what I originally planned for. This ties back into opportunities because collaboration can help me see things outside of my perfectionist perspective and help get what needs to be done; done.

 

The focus of my thesis is to design interaction between children(2-8) and digital interfaces. The reason why this is my focus is because recently children have been using digital devices much more than they ever have in the past, and that interaction hasn’t been explored in a way that benefits both the business and the children. I want to create an interaction that can be safe for the child and profitable for the business.

 

The way I want to do this is by creating a physical toy that you can interact with in a digital world. Build a spaceship with building blocks, → input into digital device → make pretend play real.

 

How does this benefit the child? It bridges the gap between physical play and digital play making them similar to each other. This helps children interact with the physical world that they see everyday and this new digital world that they are constantly placed into.

 

How is this profitable? The physical toy and the digital toy can be expanded into a product line of different themes. Before I mentioned a spaceship… there could also be a boat theme, a car theme, an animal theme. The physical expansion of the themes will create products that can be sold via e-commerce and brick and mortar stores. Individually each theme can function on its own and the digital accompaniment is incentive to buy the physical toy rather than other similar toys.

 

Game Collab: Flappy Disco

Here is the first prototype of flappy disco or DiscoRun (not sure what to call it yet)

I made a flappy bird based game with an audiovisual element added to make the obstacles more interesting and dynamic.

Here is some footage.

From a design standpoint what I found was that flappy bird had an inherent rhythm to it. The player would find their beat and stick to it. I wanted to take this experience I had playing the game and amplify it. I did this by using an audio visualizer to create the obstacles instead of have them be completely random and increasingly difficult.

The only issue with this approach is that it becomes hard to balance a level.

The song determines when the bars will change and making sure that everything works together in a way that is not only possible but has some sort of clear difficulty ramping. Custom making music for this game will be necessary.

Overall its a cool prototype that I might work on later. Its already fun to play, just needs A LOT of fine tuning.

Game Studio/Lab Collab: Week 1 – Flappy Bird Clone

Its Wednesday and I started to just recreate the basic mechanics of flappy bird.

There are two core rules to the game:

1 – The bird must not touch the ground or the pillars

2 – The pillars must repeat at increasing frequency and random heights.

Reward is the longer you survive the more points you get.

The way I want to change the game is the way that the pillars are created without changing the rule that they must be at an increasing frequency and random heights is by including an audio visualizer to the pillars and change the genre of the game to include rhythm.

Asym Multiplayer Game: Review

itch.io download link: https://youngjord.itch.io/an-okay-game

Our game was called CyberDome, an asymmetrical 2 versus 1 / co op arena combat multiplayer game. The game is set in the CyberDome, a futuristic arena made for the most glorious combat.

There are three players in our game. Two players are in the same team and the third one is against them –

Player 1 (Light) – They have the ability to use a jetpack to navigate around the environmental and are equipped with a quick fire laser gun. This makes them more agile but less impactful in terms of damage and hence they have to work in accordance with the other player to win the game. They have also have two special abilities, one of them being shielding (protecting themselves and their partner). This ability has a cool down,a forcing the player to use it judiciously.They are viewed from a first person perspective.

Player 2 (Heavy) – They are equipped with a heavy laser beam gun and don’t have the ability to jump, which while limits their agility, but greatly increases their damage. They also have the bonus ability to throw bombs. Also to make it more challenging and force the player to use their ability more judiciously, the ability has a cool down.They are also viewed from a first person perspective.

Players 1 and 2 team up to defeat Player 3.

Player 3 (Boss) – They are the most powerful character game who features the most number of abilities, which are four different attacks, (while doing the same amount of damage, they force the player to strategize their play style accordingly) Unlike the other players, the boss can’t move as it is attached to the center of the arena, but it can rotate in order to prevent its weak spots being hit and strategize it’s style, whether it’s offense or defense.

Goals of the game – For Players 1 and 2, they have to team up to defeat Player 3 in order to win. Whereas Player 3 has to defeat Players 1 and 2 to win.

How is the game asymmetrical – The game shows it’s asymmetricality primarily by differentiating the experience of each player. While Players 1 and 2 feel like playing a first person shooter bossfight game, Player 3 feels like playing a top down action with tower defense elements. And even when the primary goal of Players 1 and 2 are same, their individual interactive experience are differentiated enough to elicit different emotions when engaging in interaction.

The Player roles are balanced in such way that in terms of health and impact of damage, the boss is equal to the other two players combined and vice versa.

Our Roles

While everyone holistically assisted everyone, here are our primary roles in the making of the game respectively –

Wilson and Tanish – Level Design, Effects, UI

Meriç – Character Design and Creation, assisting in programming.

Jordan – Primary Gameplay Scripting, assisting in character abilities design

PlayTech Presentation and Feedback –

As luck would have it, owing to time shortages, we presented a playable demo of our game at the PlayTech event. While it was certain that there was still a considerable amount of refining to do for our final version, much to our surprise the game was well received in terms of the overall look and feel of it. Almost all of the people playing the demo responded positively to how to visuals of the environment, characters, UI and effects melded to create a cohesive experience reminiscent of cyberpunk art. Obviously if given more time, we would refine on our game by making the interactions and game logic more robust, but we’re proud that we were able to take this challenge and came up with something which was certainly a step in the right direction.