Final Blog Post: Course Overall Reflection and Thoughts

My Thoughts:

This is by far one of the fun and interactive DECO courses I've done so far in UQ. Plus, it's a Lorna course, who doesn't like courses taught by Lorna? ;) The other one that was fun and good was back in my first year when I did DECO1100 where we were given time to test and play various games in the exhibition hall.

Along this course, I felt that i've learnt quite a lot of stuff, especially in coding. My coding skills have not been any good at all in my whole life as an IT student, but this semester itself i've learnt alot through AS3 and it's given me some hope and drive to go learn more programming. I have also learnt alot of prototype skills especially in this course. In every prac session, I really liked the exercises given to us. One of the good ones was to invent a makey-makey connection that allows us to play mario cat and one of the challenge was to not have the ground connected to us. This exercise itself helped my final prototype alot as i've actually made waters in the cups the ground/earth.

Hence,  i do believe that prac sessions are really useful and should be made mandatory, maybe make 70-80% attendance to pass the course? I remembered back in graphic designs (deco2200) where attendance to prac and tutorial sessions were mandatory and each of us made efforts to go, and we ended up learning alot from the sessions. But either way, even if each prac is not made mandatory, I think the TESTING SESSIONS should be made mandatory so that all students could benefit from the session. If 5 users only turn up to the testing session, the results are not broad enough or opinions could all be much similar to each other. I was lucky to have a good practical session where normally at least about 10 students would be around.

For the first assignment (video), I was disappointed that there was no Premiere Pros in our IT building, compared to the JACs building. Lucky for me, I own the Adobe CC student suite. But what about the other students that dont have? To rely on photoshop to edit videos is quite hard. Really hope that the IT building next time supports premiere pro as well, especially the mac lab.

About prototype planning at the start, i felt that maybe more consultation times with the tutor or even the lecturer (Lorna) would help. Because this would be the single idea that would be built and last for the would last the whole semester. For me, I actually had 3 game mash up ideas and going for one was quite hard. But I'm really thankful for all the tutors' who helped me assessed each game mash up and choose the right one for me to develop and build on.

All in all, I felt that I learnt a lot through this course. Going through the assessments along with your peers and getting advise from the tutors were really helpful. Many tutors and friends actually help me alot especially in coding. Being a more design based student, I'm very glad to be able to learn more about designing especially back in assignment 1, the video prototype where i get to learn how to make a good kickstarter style video which in future could be really beneficial for me. I also learnt alot of designing skills in illustrator as i have to make many of my objects through it.

Really thankful that I've taken this course. It's also a bittersweet ending as this would be the last course that Lorna would be teaching me in UQ. Thank you so much to all tutors (Will, Callum, Khoa and Peter) and Lorna!

PS: below are all the videos of the prototypes that I've done on the game mash-up of tic tac toe and minesweeper along the whole semester:

Video 1: Kickstarter Video Prototype

Video 2: Demonstration on Interactive Prototype II

Video 3: Demonstration on Interactive Prototype III

Week 13 Prac B Testing of Friends' prototypes!

It's the last day of Pracs/Classes!

After setting up my game and allowing friends and tutors to check out my game, I also had a chance to look around other people's game prototypes. one of the games that I really liked is this picture above here. It's a game of controlling the motorbike but you will have a timer bar which will decrease greatly if you keep touching the glasses. If you dont touch the glass, you will lose your sight. I got a score of 56 which was pretty decent. Really enjoyed the game at how random the cars could come and you would have to avoid them using the physical controllers.

Another prototype I liked a lot is none other than +Alex Balson's Star Thief. It was so much fun watching how the game was developed bit by bit since the start of the course, including the invention of his cool controllers. Below is a video of the four of us +Daniel H , +Cody Matthews , +Alex Balson  and I where we tested and enjoyed the game thoroughly. A really good way to end the last day of uni.

 *watch in HD!

Feedback for Testing and Evaluation- Interactive Prototype III

Several questions and feedback that will be asked to the users after testing this prototype:
a) Was there any problem between the interactivity of the ball, cups and also the gameplay itself? Did you hit a particular cup and a mark appeared on another tile instead?

Feedback from several users:
- at first there was no problem. But after some time i realised that taking the ball out of the cups would trigger either one of the coordinate which eventually will trigger the wrong coordinates for the next mark.
- no problems at all.
- Yes there were problems as marks appeared on another tile instead. But these could be how the marks were implemented. There should have been 16 keys instead of using the coordinate values.
- yes there were problems as mark appeared on another tile. But because of the makey makey's constraints, it is good that you try to work around with what you have, rather than tweaking the makey makey and have 16 keyboard keys to insert each tile into each key. Having multiple balls and allowing them to stay in the cup would definitely help to solve this problem.

Reflection and Outcome:
i did realize this problem when i was testing the product myself. the first ball that enters a cup and makes a mark would not have any problem at all. the problem comes when the ball is being taken out of the cup for the user to play. When this happens, the program might record either one of the coordinates of the current cup that had the ball, this means that when the ball lands into another cup, the mark will not appear on that particular cup but this time it will appear on another tile. This could be solved by changing how the marks are put into the tiles. Instead of having coordinates that take up the position of the tiles, 16 distinct keys could be inserted into the game to recognize 16 distinct tiles. However, this would mean that I would need to change the default MakeyMakey instead of working around its constraints. Other than that, everyone liked the interactivity between the physical beer pong prototype connected to the game through MakeyMakey.

b) What do you think of this new feature? Does it actually improve the interactivity of the game by changing the game style into a more skill based game instead of just relying on the chance/luck based game?

Feedback from several users:
- its way more fun now. i feel that the game now is more random and i love the beer pong feel to it. definitely way more interesting to selecting tiles on a screen.
- It makes it more of skill based and challenging.
- the game's current iteration is great. It focuses on a physical task that needs to be performed that requires some degree of skill to be executed.
- i feel that this game's interactivity is very interesting. And it does help making the game more skill based as you would need to actually know/learn how to bounce balls into cups instead of easily selecting a mark by selecting a button.

Reflection and Outcome:
I am really happy to receive positive feedback on the new physical prototype. This feature helps to improve the original gameplay, making it overall a really tactical skill based game. With this feature, the game becomes more challenging and will take longer for one round to end.

c) Was it hard to land the ball into a cup? What do you think of the addition of the 3 tries per turn rule and skip function implemented? Does the skip function give a heavy advantage to the opponent?

Feedback form several users:
- landing the balls wasn't too hard. but landing it exactly where i want it is going to require a bit of luck. i foresee this game taking awhile to complete due to the luck required to land the balls at the designated spots. it may not give the opponent much of a help to be honest. if he is able to skip it back to you. unless there is a forfeit for landing at already open cups or out of the arena, there isnt much incentive to skip? i didnt try out the skip function tho  just from my own guess.
- I didn't find it too difficult to land the balls in the cups.
- It's not too hard to land a ball into the cup, but to land a ball into the desired cup is quite hard. you would have to aim properly and be really good at beer pong. I think the skip feature is good. It realy punishes a player if he doesn't manage to land a ball into a cup. But i dont think it gives a heavy advantage to the opponent as he would also have to earn his mark in the game. Hence, i do like the idea of having this skip feature which is logistically good

Reflection and Outcome:
I liked the users comments saying that landing a ball is not hard at all, but aiming at one would be hard. This would be the reason why this game can act as a game by itself and could then be added into the original game to make it more challenging to place a single mark on a tile. also, as the previous prototype was very quick to end, this game will last way longer if compared.


d) On a scale of 1 – 10, what do you think of the length in time of the game? Did it take too long for a round to end? (1 for very short time and 10 for very long time).

Feedback form several users:
- 8. its quite long but users shouldn't find it a drag to complete it. good replacement for a beer pong game
- 5
- 7
- 6
- 5
- 7

Reflection and Outcome:
Out of all the feedback i got above, the average score was 6.3, which is quite reasonable. the users think that the game would take quite some time to play, but would not take too long till a point where they will get too bored and not even end the game.

e) Any other suggestions that could improve the current gameplay of the physical interaction?

Feedback form several users:
- maybe slightly bigger cups so that games may be completed within a shorter time? maybe have walls around the cups so that the balls may ricochet off the walls and maybe into the cups instead of falling off the table. also a measure so that the balls dont go off the table and forcing the user to pick it up, wasting time
- Have multiple balls and let them stay in the cups, as well as having the program sense who's turn it is.

Reflection and Outcome:
I really agree that small walls could be implemented in this game around the cups which could help
to ensure that a ball would enter the cups. This way, the duration of a whole game would decrease gradually as chances for a ball to enter the cup increases greatly. A really good idea to implement and improve the prototype. Next, I also do agree that playing the game with multiple balls would help as then users wont have to take the ball out of the cup. If there would be another prototype to implement, I would definitely make a small square tile that reveals the colour of the player to reflect who's turn it is.


Overall Reflection:
I am really satisfied with the final outcome of this interactive prototype III. As this prototype received a lot of positive feedback, i believe that the testing and objective of this game succeeded. The main objective that I wanted to test was making the game more challenging and changing the mode into a more skill based game instead of a chance/luck based game.

Interactive Prototype III Concept Idea/Experiment/Plan B.

For this prototype, I have decided to make a feature addition into my current prototype. The plan for interactive prototype III is to implement the beer pong technique game into the current game mash up of tic-tac-toe and minesweeper. The reason why this idea came up was to make the game more of a skill based and strategy as well instead of a chance/luck game. Naturally with this idea, the game will also last longer as it is harder to place a mark now rather than just choosing tiles in the previous prototypes.

The idea:

figure on the Left: 16 cups; figure on the right: one cup with three wires
*Three wires are horizontal, vertical wire and ground wire. 

There will be 16 cups in fixed positions and each of them with similar set up to the figure on the right. Players will now get to use a ball (either a ping pong ball or rubber or squash ball) and bounce it over from an acceptable distance towards the 16 cups. Logically, if the ball lands on either one of the cup, the player's mark will appear in the game.

Set Up Experiment/Trial Run:

To set this up for a trial run, I aligned the three wires in such a way that when the ball lands into the cup, the ball will make contact with all three wires and make the connection.

How i set up the wires for this trial run. 2 vertical and one horizontal beneath it to hold the ball together in place.
(click image to enlarge)

Ping pong ball with water used and tested.
(click image to enlarge)

Experiment Discovery
1. A ping pong ball doesn't work even if it is dipped into the water before it being bounced into the cup. This is because when it is bounced, the water that is around the ball will not make a good connection and hence, resulting a high chance of no connection being made.

2. A ball of plasticine (playdoh) works. From the .gif file on the left, I used a  red playdoh to test out the connection of three wires in the cup and it worked perfectly fine. The only problem was that a playdoh obviously cannot bounce and the game idea could not work with a playdoh.

Plan B:

From the figure above, I've added water to this same game concept. So this time, when the ball bounces into the cup, the 'grounded' water will be displaced and will touch the vertical and horizontal wire which will make the connection. I've decided to use a squash ball instead of ping pong balls as they have similar sizes to the ping pong ball but have more weight on it, making it easier to displace water in the cup. So yeap, i will have 16 cups of this which will correspond to each tile in the game!! (:

Progress- Setting up:

The .gif below shows a trial run i did to make sure this technique will work. This trial was done before setting up all the 16 cups in place. From the .gif below, it is seen that when the ball enters the cup, it displaces the water, making a connection; landing a mark in the game.

 I used 'Mighty Tac' glue to put together the cups and a solid cardboard as a base. The reason why the cups need to be glued was because the cups could fall over when the ball is being tossed at it, which is something we all dont want to happen.

Picture below shows the overall set up of the 4x4 grid 16 cups glue to the cardboard.

The COMPLETE Setup:

Picture below shows the complete set up of my new physical prototype.

Keys A, S, D and F mapped onto my surface pro trough MakeyMakey.

Two ground wires are put onto the cardboard which are then branched out into many wires that connects to all the 16 cups. Ground wires are always touching the water which makes the water itself grounded (earth).

Here's a demonstration video i made for this prototype

Thank you for visiting my blog! (:

Week 12 Contact (Revisit Definition of a Prototype)

For the last contact exercise, we have been asked to revisit the definition of prototype that we once did before back in Week 1.

Referring to week 1, i now realised that there are so many other forms of prototype than just  labeling them all into digital and physical prototypes. I've learnt many types of prototypes that i've learnt, especially lo-fi and hi-fi and even from horizontal to vertical to diagonal prototypes.

I (in week 1) defined Prototype as a test product after a basic idea is formed. I would like improve this definition. Prototype is actually a form of design iteration that users use to test the products after an idea is formed. Further and more Hi-fi prototypes are developed after each testing and feedack received to further improve the product.

i have also learnt and experienced that constructive feedback and also testing of the prototype is very important to further improve the idea. Without constructive feedback from other users, you are only constrained by what you think of the product. But when users start to test it, they will sometimes see it in a different angle and give you feedback that you couldn't think of, which was very important in my game mash-up prototype of minesweeper and tic-tac-toe.

Interactive Prototype II Testing, Evaluation and Interview

So, in Prac B several people including a tutor tested out the product. And along the way i interviewed them with these questions which are from my SOD. Each questions will have the answers of the users and also a reflection from my point of view.

a) Is there any problem with the interactivity of the physical board when the game is being played? If yes, any suggestion to improve on the concept/idea of the physical inputs?
- I didn't encounter any problems with the interactivity, it seemed fine to me.
- I did have trouble pressing the playdoh as different marks appeared on the computer. but that was easily solved when a small error was found out (some makeymakey connections were touching when they are not supposed to touch with each other).
- No problems at all. very good and easy and understandable interactivity.
- No, I think it works fine
- I don't have any problems at all, the controls are incredibly intuitive.

Reflection:
It was pretty surprising to me that nobody had problems with pressing the playdoh-made buttons except for one where the makeymakey connection was touching which caused a problem. It seems that most users who tested the game was not very rough at the game. Many pressed gently and nicely instead of smashing the buttons. eg. Smashing a particular button really hard may cause another button to appear on the game. But with the middle wires having smaller playdoh buttons compared to the side ones, it was proved that the problem was rectified.

b) What do you think of the current method of connecting the ground wire to the body using wristbands as finger ring holders? What about methods such as using sponge as a ground/ selector and also making an area on the physical board as ground connection?
 - I would like it if it could be done without having the user connected to ground, but I don't mind the way it is now.
- putting the ground on the board works well too, as users will free up their hand. with this then each time a user makes a move, he need to touch the 'ground area'. 
- I don't have a problem with the player being the ground, although You could maybe make the ground between the  two wires you want to connect, so that when you push down, all 3 connect at the same time.
- Using a potato would be better! 
- I would prefer if players didn't have to hold onto anything when they played. If a more convenient way for the cables to ground could be found it'd be a perfect interaction. I'd suggest a common grounding layer on the bottom.

Reflection:

Some users preferred the ground not to be connected to the user, but still feels that the current method works well. During the testing session, instead of using wristbands as ring holders to users' fingers, i brought potatoes in and connected the ground to it (see figure above). users will then instead hold the potato while the other free hand presses the buttons to play the game. i realized that potatoes were really good conductors as ground compared to sticking. Some users said holding potatoes does actually give them more freedom as they could put down the potato whenever it wasn't their turn. 

c) Is there a better way to make sure the floating wires are always tight and not becoming loose over time? Does putting a separator in between the buttons help?
- I think the way you have it currently works well
- A separator could work, you could also try attaching springs to the sides of wires to let them go back into place.
- the same one works fine. Dont see the need to why a separator is needed.
- Smaller more flexible cables could be used to control cable tension for each button precisely. 

Reflection:

As I received feedback upon this question, I realised I had alot of extra unused sponges from daiso, which worked really well as separators. Although most of the users who tested the prototype said that it is fine as it is, I think after having these sponges as separators, there would not be any wrong marks appearing on the screen would happen anymore.

d) What do you think of the freedom given to choose how the scoring system works? It is better than providing all the rules to the players?
- I think it works quite well for the way the game is played, due to how casual and locally it is played.

- It certainly allows for many variations of the game to appear

- Very good for players to just want to play casually.
- I like the freedom given to players. But in the standards of almost all computer games, the rules should probably be set.

Reflection:
Based on the feedback that I got, majority of the users agreed that giving the complete freedom to the players to set their own rules are good enough to match the game. a particular user said that as there are no exact rules to playing, players could just play the game until eventually one of them just gives up as the score may go up to 11-1 or 11-0.  So, i've decided that the gameplay will remain the same with no specific rules to the scoring system.

e) Any other suggestions that could improve the gameplay of the physical interaction?

- As I've said before, some way of detecting the mines beforehand would be very useful for making the game less luck-based
- I think to improve the interaction, a smaller controller should be made, with no playdoh involved, perhaps foil instead to stop inconsistency.

Reflection:
I do agree that the game is quite luck-based. So with the upcoming interactive prototype III, I will make increase the interactivity of the game with something more interesting. What i will aim for is to decrease the luck/chance based game into a more strategic and skilled game play.

OVERALL REFLECTION AND PROTOTYPE III PLAN:
All in all, i think I received quite a good response from the testing of this prototype. I believe that there are alot more improvements that I can make especially making the game less chance based and use another sort of button reactions. STAY TUNED FOR PROTOTYPE III! I plan to use the same game concept but this time implement beer pong into the game! (:

Week 11 Contact Class Exercise

Imagine a Theremin Duet or orchestra. Generate concepts for consistently reproducing & representing 3D movement in space that allows a musical composition to be accurately played on a Theremin. 

1. Using a Wii Remote or a Kinect Sensor or even a PS Camera to detect motions on both right and left hands. There should also be a monitor that constantly displays the positions of both hands at a suitable frame rate (24fps). With the monitor, user could track the amount of pitch and depth of the sound easily and hence make music out of the Theremin instrument!

2. Two strings method; one horizontally and the other vertically. These strings have sensors that can calculate the length/distance of an item, or solid rock on it that could be made as a controller. In each of the strings, there will be a node that acts like a controller. User moves these two nodes within the two strings and the position of it will be detected, hence a theremin instrument can be created.

3. Use two infrared sensors. These two sensors will detect the user's hand movements. one moving up and down and the other move away or close to the sensor. A theremin instrument is created here.

Pugh Matrix to compare concepts. What criteria important to measure against?