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?

Week 10 Contact Exercise

The Restaurant Dining Experience
What is the existing experience? From different
stakeholder P.O.V.?
A customer's point of view:
1. I (the customer) walk in. I get greeted and asked by the waiter how many seats do i need.
2. I'm walked into my table. And menus were given to me by the waiter.
3. We (my significant other and I) took our time to choose the food to order.
4. I called for the waiter's assistance and with their help we ordered our food.
5. Then we wait for the food to be served to us.
6. We finish eating and ask for the bill from the waiter.

A waiter's point of view:
1. I (the waiter) greet new customers that walk in. Ask for how many seats do they need and ask them to wait if there are no current available seats. If not, I'd walk them into their seats.
2. I pass the menus to the customers.
3. I wait and give the customers some time to decide on the food. I approach them if they ask for me or after 10 minutes of wait.
4. I pass the order to the kitchen team where they will take care of the cooking part.
5. I take the cooked food and present it to the customer.
6. Coming up with the bill and handing it to the customer.
7. settle the payments and pass small titbits/ goodies to customer. and say thanks with gratitude.


What external/internal factors impact on the experience?
- on a specific day, how many waiters are working in the restaurant and with this same exact number of workers, how many people do they serve in an hour in the same day.

- another factor that can impact the experience is during rush/peek hours of the restaurants, say 12pm or 7pm where there will be many customers in the restaurant.

What aspects of the existing experience could be
enhanced/augmented/supported with technology?
- one way to improve the experience of ordering food is to provide a touchscreen tablet such as an ipad or note 8.0 with a dedicated app for customers to order food. Many modern resaturants such as sushi restaurants are already using this technology. it saves time and saves cost as they dont have to hire many waiters, although alot of of cost have to be spent on the tablets and the maintenance of it.

- another technology could be having the eptfos/debit card payment machine in every table, so customers would not have to waste their time lining up at the counter to pay the bill.

How would introducing technology in to this context
change the experience?
- it helps waiters especially during peek hours. customers could just order anytime they want without waiting for the waiter to come and take their orders.
- save cost by not having to hire alot of waiters, but only hire minimum waiters to serve food/drinks to customers.
- there would not be any mistakes in transmitting the order to the cooks in the kitchen as human transferring orders manually can randomly miss an order which could frustrate the customer.
- customers could also track the cooking status of their ordered food with the tablet.
- printing of menus are not needed as well.

What experience scenarios might you test with the
technology?
during peek hours such as 12pm lunchtime, the tablets will all be used in each table. customers would use the technology. Keep another corner of the room and allow that corner to use the traditional printed menus and using the waiters to take orders. Compare both the time it took for the food to be served to the customers since it was ordered, either through the tablet or through the waiters.

a picture of a customer ordering food in a sushi restaurant in Malaysia called Sakae Sushi that implements this technique.

image source: here! (:

Interactive Prototype II (Concept, Progression, Outcome and VIDEO Demonstration!

Concept and Idea for Interactive prototype II

image 1

The screenshot above is the plan that i had, to originally have 4 horizontal and 4 vertical wires that intersect with each other so when each time the buttons are pressed, the corresponding coordinate in the game will light up as a mark. So the idea is to have keys a,s,d,f mapped to the horizontal wires and also arrow keys left, up, down and right connected to the vertical wires. When a button is pressed, say the top left corner, the makey makey will read it as coordinate (a, left arrow).

Image 2

For image 2, it is a 3d view of the physical buttons that i came to think about, which are two horizontal wires that intersect with each other and once the button is pushed, button is connected to the ground and a full circuit connection is made with MakeyMakey.

PROGRESSION/PLAN

Image 3 - Electrical wires i found from Repco. and using a blade, insulators of the wires were cut in the middle. This is to make sure the connection occurs when buttons is pressed or touched. 

Image 4 - four vertical wires and also one of the four horizontal wires that is intersecting with the vertical wires.

 Image 5- using playdoh as buttons

BUT WAIT THIS PLAN DOESN'T WORK! As I connected all of the board to the MakeyMakey, it was obvious that it would not work, this is because as all the 4 horizontal and 4 vertical wires are constantly connected, this means that each time one button is pressed, the MakeyMakey recognizes it as all buttons at once (a,s,d,f, up, down, left and right), as all buttons are connected/intersected with each other all the time. Then what to do now??!!

PLAN B

Instead of having all these wires intersect with each other all the time, I made it in such a way that it only intersects when the buttons (playdoh) are touched.

See pictures below and you'll understand more!

 Image 6 - So with this new plan, the horizontal wires are on the base of the board, and the vertical ones are floating.

 Image 7 - Playdohs are added as buttons to the vertical floating wires. So, when these playdohs are pressed, it will touch the base wire and make an intersection, not forgetting that the ground will be connected to the user.







Image 8- image below: close up of the playdoh/buttons on the wires. there are four buttons in each wire, the buttons on the sides are bigger as it is harder for it to be pressed, compared to the middle buttons which are easier.

image 9 - connection of the wires to the MakeyMakey.

OUTCOME

Image 10 - the complete set up!

Referring to image 10, on the top right would be my surface (connected to the MakeyMakey) where i run the game, and the middle would be the physical board itself. At the bottom right, there are two wristbands green and red in colour; these two wristbands are used as ground connected to users. Users easily just slide the wristband into any of their finger.

Video Demonstration

Thank you for going through this long blog post! (:

Week 9 Prac

For this week's prac, we were asked to come up with MakeyMakey controls for cat mario online.
One of the challenge was to not have the ground connected to your body directly.

So, since cat mario uses only 3 keys (left, right and jump) controls, i utilised my jacket to create a left and right movement.

I put folded aluminium foils onto both right and left of the shoulder of the jacket. and then made a jump button in an arrow shape.

From the first picture, legendary +Alex Balson wore my jacket and started playing cat mario. As ground somehow couldn't be connected to your body, I made a play-doh ball as a cursor where users need to touch the ball to the pads on the shoulders or the 'jump' button to move.

The 2nd challenge from William was to make the game being played by 2 players. so I made two earths, and one player controlled the left and right movements and another controlled the jump button. It was very challenging as a lot of coordination was needed to play the game.

I learnt quite a few techniques from this session of prac. I also got feedback from William and friends about my own prototype game. I realised that making 16 buttons and connected all individual 16 buttons onto the MakeyMakey would be quite hard. It was concluded that a coordinates thingy should be done and then if a 4x4 grid is used, only 8 buttons are needed to be mapped onto the MakeyMakey.

Week 8 Exercise

Given these applications: Email, Twitter, Super Mario Bros (the platformer game);
Come up with at least 5 different physical interactions
for each.
What are the elements/controls of each application
that would afford an alternative interaction method?
How would you map the interactions onto/into physical
objects/actions?

Email
1. Physically write the letter out with a pen/pencil, then slide it through a filter that scans through everything you wrote. Given two buttons, green or red, if user presses the green button, message is good to be sent. If red, message is not ready yet and should be reedited.
2. Use a piano stairs to type out the email.
3. clap twice while reading an email to flag that current email.
4. do a 'drum roll' sound with your fingers to send the email.
5. Using the webcam, swipe gestures from left to right to delete the email. and right to left to 'flag' the email.

Twitter
1. to retweet simply just chirp 'tweet tweet'.
2. to follow people, use hand gestures such as having both hands with ten fingers up facing the computer for 5 seconds. to unfollow people, close those two hands and bring them away.
3. to reply a tweet, simply say out the command "tweet 'username' 'message' ".
4. Make a NFC tap to tweet trigger. Tap the NFC to tweet and voice out your message to the tweet, then chirp to post the tweet.
5. Talk to a robotic bird and allow it to compile and let it tweet the post for you.

Super Mario Bros
1. Use a flight of stairs for user to run forwards and backwards. middle of the stairs means standing still.
2. Shout 'jump' to jump.. Or to make things more fun/interactive, shout 'duck' to jump.
3. Use a physical toy gun's trigger to detect as a shotting/firing weapon or even punching.
4. Set up a playground with real obstacles and replicate them into the game, that way user will actually play the game for real instead of just sitting down and using the computer game.
5. Use a dance dance revolution controller to control mario instead of the normal Wii or keyboard controllers.

Interview/Testing Week 7B

So as usual right after Interactive Prototype I was due, we had our user testing and interview/surveys in the B prac.
I asked several specific questions in regards to what I was testinng my prototype on.
There were two specific things that I wanted to test in this prototype:
1. When a mine explodes, what happens after that, immediately change to the opposite colour or clear off the area
2. the scoring system of the game:
   a) the old scoring system was scoring two points in the game to win. 3 marks in a line earns a point.
   b) new system is a best of 5 rounds based game. to win a round, simply make 4 marks in a line.

Here are the questions that I prepared from my Statement of Delivery II and also feedback answers that I got from interviewing the testers.

a) Was the exploding of the mines interactive enough? eg: The mine revealing itself for 2 seconds and then disappears or even should sound effects be added into the game.
        - The delay feels abit long.
        - The delay seems fine.
        - The interaction is there, but the it sometimes seems too slow to know whether the tile is safe or not when a mark is placed there. Try to find a way to reduce the delay so that users will know what's happening
        and there's no delay.
        - There's no problems recognising the mine. If you don’t realise it you obviously have issues.
   
b) What do you think of the concept of ‘opponent’s mark’ appearing after the mine explodes? Does it give too much advantage or it is a good implementation instead of just making the mines disappear and the same tile empty again.

   - It is a good idea. What do you think about mines goes off but generate another in another place.
   - It gives alot of advantage to the opponent and the game ends too fast when player is unlucky.
   - The implementation is good as it gives more advantage to the opponent.
   - Better if it returns to nothing. Because it gives the opponent too much of an advantage.


c) What do you think of the new scoring system concept? Is it better compared to the original ‘3 marks one point, two points to win’ concept?
   - The current scoring system > old.
   - U might necessary don’t need to have the best out of 3. The rules does not have to be inbuilt. Players can set the rules himself.
   - I like the multiple of rounds. I prefer multiple rounds compared to the old system. One round seems to end way faster and boring.

d) Is the help button necessary in the whole game at all? (This question is to be asked for further feedback on the future prototype as some users previously thought that the ‘help’ button doesn’t actually help them at all as it gives the opponent an advantage to know where the mines are.

   - Help button: opponent look away/close eyes
   - That could work. With opponent's looking away. Not knowing about where is the mine. hypothetically the idea would be good, but need to check if its actually helping the player, when testing.

e)      Any other feedback/suggestions to improve the game?

   - Changing the map of the game from a 4x4 map into a 6x6 map, with 6 mines. Score 2 lines of 5/6 to win the game. This would make the game end longer.
   - Fix the BUGs of player checks/wins!! I like the hovering effect. Make sure player who loses starts the new game (round) first.
   - With the 6x6 map idea, maybe try it with more than 1 MakeyMakey? So that you could build a bigger board and make the game longer.
   - The game can be 6x6. it can be theoretically 6x6, but for the prototype's purpose, just because of the constraints of the MakeyMakey, you can make a 4x4 one instead.
   - Scoreboard. Indicators to know who's turn it is. Instead of static number, make circles as scoreboard. More interactive.

Self Reflection after the testing and interviews:
- I think that the implementation of the new concept of mark1>mine>mark2 is good compared to the old concept although it gives a heavy advantage to he opponent.
- I also like the new scoring system, although one of the feedback i received was that I should allow users to have the freedom to set their own rules. eg: how many rounds/games should they play.
- I am considering to make a 6x6 map and then implement the usual 4x4 map for the MakeyMakey just for testing. as a 6x6 would mean a longer game, a bigger map, more mines, MORE FUN!

Will start on the MakeyMakey soon!! stay tuned!! thanks for reading! (:

Week 7 Exercise

So for this week's exercise, we were asked to think about the questions that we asked in our feedback for the first video prototype assignment.

I believe that most of the questions that I asked was very qualitative instead of quantitative.
(questions and feedback can be found here).

Although most of my questions were quite specific, most of the questions that I asked were mostly opinions based. So there was pretty much no right or wrong answer and it all depended on different individuals itself. I learnt that I should make my questions more quantitative instead too, eg. coming with a scale of 1-10 asking people what they think about this special feature, is it good enough.

I also learnt that I should not/never ask questions such as, "is the game fun?" or even "do you like the game?".

Week6 Exercise & Interactive Prototype 1 Plan

EXERCISE

figure 1: the game concept

Objects on the concept of the game This Means War.
So based on figure 1 above, which is a screenshot of the video prototype shows all the elements/objects needed to create this game in Flash/ Action Script:

1. A main window for a 4x4 grid layout.
This window would allow all objects to appear on the stage and with the grid layout, then players would easily distinct which square has not been marked and vice versa.

2. Tiles.
Red and blue tiles for users to show their mark. Yellow tiles for hidden mines. The mines are also considered as an object. The red or blue tiles need to know that if 3 (maybe) marks connect diagonally, vertically or horizontally, the player would earn one point.

- also another minor tile would be a grey 50% opacity tile. This tile would be used when users score points and this grey tiles will appear to sort of highlight the marks that connect to each other. This tile should also know that if it happens to appear in the game, the game should end. This means that player should NOT be able to place new marks anymore.

3. Players (as this is a two player game).
Two players should be created. Red player which is the first player and blue player which is the second. Players object need to know that when respective player clicks anywhere on the grid, their own colour mark will appear.

4. ? (Help) button.
The '?' button should be created at the side of the grid layout. Help button needs to know that if it is clicked, it will reveal one mine. Only one player could reveal one mine in the whole game.

5. Main Scoreboard.
The main scoreboard is to keep track of the number of mines each player has. it needs to know that when 3 marks (maybe 4) connect, it will add one point to the respective player. and it needs to know that if player scores a certain amount of points (2 points), the game ends and the respective player wins the game.

PS: i've started learning AS3 from the prac tutorials especially the pong prac.
I also found a good tutorial website that creates a good 3x3 classic tic tac toe that I could make use of for my prototype.

CRC cards for the scenarios that are to be tested in this prototype.

PLAN FOR INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE 1
in this interactive prototype 1, i hope to be able to implement a working 4x4 tic tac toe with hidden mines on it. I will be testing the interactivity of the mines when it is hit by the player and also what happens to the game after the mine explodes. Will the same spot automatically turn into the opposite colour in the opponent's favour or will it go back to an empty spot instead? This would be the main thing that I would be testing during the week7B prac. I also would want to know which scoring system will work better, eg. 3 marks for 1 point or 4 marks for 1 point? Should the game have several sets and each set will count as 1 point?

Thanks for reading!! will be back with more updates on the prototype!

Interview (Video Prototype Feedback)

So on week 4B we had our feedback session.
I had 6 questions about my video prototype.
I managed to interview a total of 6 people including a tutor in a 1 and half hours.

1.       What do you think of the challenge addressed?

- As a mashup its good. 2 points to win is good. More challenging.

- The challenge addressed is very well described.

- The challenge is pretty interesting and looks fun to play.

- Very good concept. Really easy to understand.

- Simple enough for everyone to understand the whole concept of the game.

2.       What do you like most in the game?

- The surprises of the bombs.

- Fairly fast paced, randomness of mines has more replay ability than the original tic tac toe. Simplicity.           Simple games to play with friends.

-  That the game is easy to understand how to play and anybody can play.

- Getting back into this game.

3.       Do you think this will bring back the ever classic tic tac toe and even minesweeper?

- get back into the game. Can see kids in high school IT class. Play flash games.

- Yes

- No I don’t think it will I think it will overtake the classic game of tic tac toe.

4.       Would you play this game with your friends/loved ones? Any particular group?

- I would.

- Yea probably because it's a very casual game that can be played by everyone.

- Yes I would play this with my friends while having some drinks.

- Teens would play this game to bond with each other.

5.       Any suggestions or problems that you think might arise?

- Chance of hitting a mine variable might have some issues with that.

- turn mark into other colours immediately after the mines are stepped.

6.       Suppose I come up with the advance mode:

       Imagine the current video prototype game as the normal mode. And now there's an advanced mode. For everytime a player leaves a mark, a number will appear on the same place as a subscript. This number that appear reveals the number of mines that is touching the spot selected. So players now will have more thinking to do and it will need more thinking instead of a chance based game. 

- Good challenge. Good idea to come up with the advance mode. Make it more challenging. 

- The new mode will turn the game from a chance based game into a map based, which is good, more challenging. More testing is required on the interactiveness on it. 

- Awesome sounds interesting and will create a new challenge where a mine is around the game board.

- The advance idea wont change much of the mode of the game.

Week 4 Exercises (Operationalising the Dashboard and Horiz, Vertical & Diagonal p’type for alarm clock smartphone app)

Part 1

What are the functional components on the car here

a. shift/pedal gears just right beneath the steering wheel

b. wheel

c. meters

d. radio/mp3 player

e. GPS voiceover button (a call button on the steering wheel)

f. air cond temp and mode.

g. gears

h. handbrake

i. window buttons

j. side mirror buttons

What components are relevant to driving behaviour (when driving)?

- the steering wheel-driver needs to use it to control the direction of the car.

- the odometer and meters in front to allow the driver to drive safely within the speed limit or even know how much petrol is left.

- the gears/ shift pedals and also handbrake which lets the user control the speed of the car.

What functional component would you change?

i would make the odometer/meter gauge an extra holographic version that floats on the screen in front. This would make it easier for the driver as he doesn't have to look away from the driveway to look at the meters. The holographic doesnt have to be too big as it would distract the user sight to drive. 

here's an example of a few cars with holographic meters.

Part 2:

Design & describe a horizontal, a vertical & a diagonal prototype for this application:

- Alarm clock application for your smartphone. 

- Can set, edit & delete multiple alarms 

- Can daisy-chain alarms - if one is allowed to ring out, another is activated automatically 

- Can set different tones for different alarms 

- Shake phone to snooze 

Horizontal Prototype:

The application features a big simple digital clock as the top part of the screen and followed by multiple alarms that could be created and saved into it. Beside each alarms are toggles which users could use it to switch between on and off for each of the multiple alarms. There should be no maximum amount of alarms that could be created and users can easily scroll down by swiping up to view more alarms that have been created. There is also a settings button right at the btm right of the app. This allows the user to go into settings to change many of the default settings such as snooze time, shake to snooze, language and others. User can also double tap any alarm to edit it's individual settings such as a specific tone for it, and also setting a daisy chain for it. 

Vertical Prototype:

From the horizontal prototype, users could double tap any alarm and go into this specific page. With this page, user could set specific tones for the alarm itself and also set a note. user can also choose another alarm to be activated if this alarm is turned off.

The page above here is the settings page. In this page, users could enable the shake to snooze and edit many other default settings such as default snooze time and also language of the application. 

Diagonal Prototype:

Scenario:

Aly is just about to go to bed and she is worried that she couldn't wake up the next day at 8am as she has a very important driving test to attend at 9am. She needs to use a good alarm clock/app.

What happens? 

Aly uses her smartphone and opens this particular alarm clock. Since she has to wake up at 8am, she sets an alarm at 8am. She goes into the settings page to toggle the shake to snooze so that the alarm would ring again just in case she's still awake.

Aly then creates another alarm at 8.20am and set another specific ringtone for this alarm. she goes back to the main page, and she double taps the 8am alarm and goes into it, and under the chain alarm section, she chooses the 8.20 alarm to be activated. This way, then Aly would definitely be alert when it's the 820 alarm because of the different tone of the alarm. Aly goes to bed peacefully knowing that the alarms would definitely wake her up the next day.