#studioplaystream

From the start of this project, our group has managed to work well with each other remarkably considering we haven’t worked as a group before. As we near the finer details of the project, involving more decision making and designing, we’ve slowed down and haven’t managed to keep it in track. This is based on what I think our capability as a group.

This is why I tried to make a point for our Monday meeting to ensure that we write down expectations on what we want to get out of the meeting but also from the next coming weeks. For the recent 2 weeks, we have had meetings where it was a lot of talk and very little decision making. It felt a little slow. Whether or not that was meant to be the pace, I’m not sure but it didn’t feel right. A part of it was a lack of direction, not knowing what I should be doing.

We managed to write down expectations for the next 4 weeks, breaking the expectations into two main columns, Overall project and BCT Showcase. The difference between the two is that the overall project covers things like concept development and preparing for the pitch with AIAL while the BCT Showcase involves coming up with a book and poster for the BCT Showcase event.

The timeline goes as follows:

Week 11:

Overall Project - Determine one concept through a collaborative floor plan, implementing different technologies

BCT Showcase - Equipment list and location chosen

Week 12:

Overall Project - Prototypes of different technologies working together incl. playtesting. Narrative creation.

BCT Showcase: Planning book & poster design and content

Week 13:

Overall Project - Further develop prototype and produce portable version to show in AIAL pitch

BCT Showcase - Final draft of book and poster (finalised overall aesthetics and layout)

Week 14:

Last week, Lara and I came up with an assumptive journey mapping for the different stages with flying from pre planning to post sharing. We tried to map out the emotion of adults throughout the process and based the children’s journey based on that. Based on our assumptions, we think that the children’s experience will be very extreme, whether they’re going to be indifferent about the experience or very excited about it. This journey map gives us the opportunity to design the experience outside of the emperor lounge to compliment the experience inside whilst improving the overall journey of flying.

While I’m not sure if we will be designing an experience outside of the emperor lounge, it gives us a visualisation of opportunities that we have if we ever need or want it.

So, I have now made 2 PDF files which I cannot upload to google plus because of some strange reason which I plan on finding out tomorrow. So, instead of dwelling on what I couldn’t do, this is what we did over the past week. 

We gave jobs out to everyone in the group with the idea that when we came back together we could go over it all and talk about what worked and what didn’t. I was given interaction and therefore I went to two interactive play spaces for research. Now I will give very brief explanations on these and when I can upload the PDF files, I will edit and redirect you to those PDF files which have far more in depth information along with the info I can’t talk about.

Firstly I went to motat to view their exhibitions, and I found that firstly, there are multiple kinds of personalities and secondly, it’s hard to keep kids quiet. The multiple personalities is a big point because we have kids who don’t want to run around and would rather just stay quiet in some smaller area. Now, with Motat that would be easy, given less room, I can’t promise that this would work anywhere close to as well.  In terms of keeping kids quiet, also important in terms of stress levels on flights and keeping kids and parents relaxed enough to have a good flight and not cause any trouble for themselves or others. Again, this is just a very brief discussion and not all the information I gathered.

Second I went to the museum and I looked into their kids space and honestly, I found the same thing in terms of personality. I found kids who were running around in tree houses and going absolutely wild, while I also saw a lot of kids who would much rather just sit down and colour in some pictures. The museum handled this well with a large area, but again, depending on the limitations of the space we have, this might not work so well.  A second part of this is that AR wasn’t used in the way we would expect. They had a small camera which they would use with their drawing to see animals come to life. However some kids just tilted the cameras up to look at themselves instead, showing that AR isn’t as interesting to kids that don’t understand the technology. 

On Tuesday, we tested out the use of animation with AR. Patricia helped get it going on and the video above shows the result. I wish to use this as a foundation on figuring out how models moving in space looks like with the use of AR but for now, I’ve decided to move onto projection mapping and journey mapping.

So what we have done so far is go away and research each of our own area’s, as I mentioned previously. And now that we have come together and talked about our findings, we found the use of “Lumo” found on our google+ page in order to look more into how we can make it our own. Again, looking from my side of accessibility, Lumo looks incredible. It can be programmed in any way to fit anyone and looking into a document I made this week which brings up the negative aspects of disabilities in terms of gaming, and how Lumo or something like it could help/offer some form of solution to it. 

With the return of the semester, Aaron and I are back to meeting up on Tuesdays to discuss what new tool we can use to further our progress. This week, we’ve discussed that we’ve spent a little bit too much time talking and researching and very little on doing. So, we’ve discussed that we’ll be doing surface-level prototyping/testing with a kinect and possibly a projector on Thursday. With a concept that heavily relies on interactivity, we thought it was key to test out just how interactive people would be with it.