(Draft by Ruchi Hendre/02212020 ; Edited by Annie)

This week we focused on the following tasks:

Phidgets and Sensors

Ningshan created prototypes in Unity for the touch and the light sensors, and tested them against the glass wall in the Kenner room. Her testing proved that the light sensors are detecting the contact on the other side of the wall better than the touch sensors. Coming week she will keep working on the phidgets while also parallely working on possible ways on building a prop for the sensors to be held in position on the glass wall. She is looking into 3D printing as a possible means for building the props for our sensors.

Projection

Ruchi worked on getting the projection film and researching options with respect to cost, installation and shape.On Monday she along with our client Stephan unmounted the projectors and carried out the testing in the Kenner room to ascertain the correct position of the projector. The throw distance was then calculated and this helped in deciding the size of the projection film.The requirement for the shape of the projection films changed in the beginning of the week as our client wanted the film not be just a square or a rectangle, but more curvier shapes such as circles or waves. The additional cost of cutting was also taken into consideration and since then she has contacted the supplier with the additional changes while also researching other options which may fetch the film for a lesser cost.

Design

(Written by Annie/ 02252020)

Template

During the meeting with the client last week, Stephan, our client, brought up that besides the polling features, he would also appreciate being able to feed in different files to showcase on the display system. After the meeting, Annie had a more in-depth discussion with Stephan on the purpose and expectation for this potential showcase feature. It helped us understand the scenarios of how and when he is expecting to use this for. Then, we designed more interactive features for these showcase purposes to fit in the template, such as RSVP to an event, expressing applause or confusion to a project. The communication helped us understand his needs, and adjust the design accordingly, so that it wouldn’t become just an extension of a regular display screen.

Develop Interactive Mechanics (Polling)

To help communicate on our concept and design, Lu visualized our design on interactive mechanics for the polling system. It emphasized on how the visual feedback happened after you made your choice (triggered by the hand touching the screen). The concept visualization was really helpful on demonstrating the mechanics and communication within the team, the client, and the instructors.

We’ve been exploring how to balance the design between abstract, which the client mentioned, and clear communication with the audience. We came up with many parameters to play with abstract shapes to create emotional feelings, such as the size, colors, movement, density, and speed. Stephan was happy to see these visualization, and now both side are more clear on what we’re building together.

Develop Interactive Mechanics (Story line)

Besides the polling, showcase, we’re also expecting to feature one more interaction to fit in the system. It’s seeking more on developing a story line. Ningshan and Lu picked three out of the many ideas they came up with to demonstrate how the interaction fits in onto the same system with polling. We were looking at asking the guest to help deliver a letter, have a conversation with someone, and build a country by making choices. It is expected to create a longer interacting time for the guests, at the same time, to create a stronger emotional feedback and reflection with these interaction. After discussing with Stephan, we decided to go further with the conversation design, and put it onto our next play-test design to test our audience’s reaction.

Pivot Interactive Mechanics (Cut-Out Film)

Stephan has raised a new adjustments on the installation design, the new challenge was to make the film screen on the window an artistic installation itself with or without the projection. The stakeholders would prefer a more polished layout onto the window to fit in the modern design of the Tepper. On top of deciding which film to go with, we also need to design the layout of the display screens, instead of just applying the whole square onto the window panels.

We quickly came up with new design for the window display, and began to explore how to accommodate the original mechanics according to the layout.

Play-testing

(Written by Annie/ 02252020)

On week 5, Annie, Lu, and Ningshan put up our third play-test outside the Kenner room. Following our previous play-test where we invited the walkerbys to put sticker on paper as polling, we improved our polling system into physical objects. Five transparent containers were stuck on the glass wall outside the Kenner room. We labelled each container with the options in different languages, while keeping the containing visible, so that you can see the accumulation of the participation. We asked the walkerbys to “share you opinion” on the subjects, and displayed the question in animation on the screen.

The purpose of these play-tests was to examine if people would really stop and interact with it. We got about 20 feedback from our first play-test over the Global Game Jam weekend, 120 votes on our second play-test (sticker) over a week, and 500 feedback from this third play-test within a week. The play-tests helped prove that our design has been improving, attracting more audience, and more focused on the identity of the room by constant communication with the client.

As mentioned earlier in the template design, we decided to work on the communication template for play-testing to ascertain whether the users are responding to it. Annie developed various contents based on the template design, following the purpose of raising empathy in cultural understanding. Lu created the animation and set up our fourth play-test with Ningshan. We narrowed down to two options for this week because we’re looking to install the sensors later this week. Consider we only have two light sensors at the moment, others aren’t delivered yet, cutting down the options doesn’t compromise the purpose of the playtesting, which is to see how our audience respond to this more complex interaction, and if they’ll interact with the sensor design.

Challenges

Challenges this week was to accommodate the change of the projection film shape, our efforts this week revolved around procuring the projection film of custom shapes, adjusting content to fit the shapes and coming up with a new design plan.

Changes Made 

We have decided to hand in the projection film + phidgets installation, a design manual containing all the possible ways our installation could be used,  tech maintenance specifications document and one implemented idea as our deliverable for this project.

Plan for Next Week

Our plan next week is to order the projection film for our project, keep testing the phidgets, refine and come up with new content ideas and keep playtesting them. We plan to have the installation prototype one ready at the Kenner room by halves presentation. Wish us all the best!