Helium Hoop

For our anti-technology interaction, we plan on creating a game that will challenge players to work as a team, and coordinate their actions to achieve a common goal. This activity will inspire teamwork, and communication skills. For our game, some influences are the game Twister, and the activity known as “the helium stick.” The basis of our game comes from the concept of the helium stick, where players are instructed to lower a light-weight rod to the floor, only making contact with the rod using both of their outstretched index fingers. This task becomes very difficult because the players are all lowering the rod at different speeds and times, and the overall upwards pressure is generally greater than the mass of the rod itself. The game works best with anywhere from 4 players or more. In our interaction we plan on taking the idea of a Twister board, and combining it with the helium stick activity. Our game will take place on a board that has a ring of circles situated around an outline of a hula-hoop. Players will each stand on a pair of circles, and have to lower the hula-hoop to the floor before an egg timer goes off. If the timer goes off they will have to rotate on the board, which will break their flow and make this task even more difficult. Some spots on the board will have certain challenges that the players will have to engage in if they land on that spot. Another possibility in game-play is a spinner that dictates which circles you move to. Our interaction is meant to focus all of the players on a single task, and make them communicate and work together to achieve the goal before the timer goes off.

Take Notes.. or Doodle?

For this assignment we were instructed to create a simple interaction having to do with one specific part of our day. I outlined an average day of mine, and realized how many possibilities there were for this assignment. After I thought about it for a while I decided that I wanted to focus on the time I spend in class. In class, some people take notes but I usually just end up doodling on my paper. I think that doodling is a very important part of the creative process, and it allows me to visually express my creativity in a way that writing would not. For this assignment, I have created an interactive notepad. The users have the ability to doodle or write in a variety of writing utensils. The purpose of this interaction is to inspire creativityin the users, the same way that it comes to me while I am sitting in class. Here's the link to my piece: Take Notes.. or Doodle?

Here's some words for ya..

people
learning
music
art
mysteries
traveling
interaction
life
games
different cultures
art
enlightenment
animation:
meaning
motion
frames
cel
humans
cartoons
emotions
life
styles
stories
movies
3D
characters
storytelling
vivid
illusions
message
shorts
suspense
time

Review of Chris' Interaction

I found Chris' flash interaction to be very interesting. You take on the role of a scientist dissecting an organism in an "online observation". You click around on the organism to learn about it, and unpeel specific layers of the organism. The images that he used are really well prepared, and are on a professional level. It is really a beautiful but eerie interactive game (or the beginning stages of this game). Although, there were a couple of things that I noticed that did take away from the overall experience of it. The first thing that threw me off a little was the wording of some of the phrases, such as "THIS IS BETWEEN JUST US THOUGH RIGHT". Also, the level of interactivity was fairly basic with not much resulting from clicking on sections of the specimen. While the purpose of this interaction was to use your palm to create an interface to tell the users about yourself, this project does not exactly reach those parameters. I think that it would be more interesting if the interaction told a little more about Chris, and not this organism. Also, the buttons or hot spots might be more noticable if something happened when you rolled over them. Overall I thought his project came out awesome, but there were definitely things that needed to be improved and expanded on.