Apple Pop Museum installation!

So our professor Tony Tseng really helped us out with his contacts. He contacted Lonnie Mims, the currator of the Computer Museum of America in Alpharetta, Ga and hooked us up with a place to show off our installation during an event they were having!

Once again we consulted with the construction team over there but this time it was more simple as it was not going to be part of a real sink with running water (like SCADpad).

Here are some images of the installation. It was a great success and met many people interested in our idea and got great feedback once again!

SCADpad has been a success!

So as I previously posted, we needed to set up an Oasis installation at the SCADpad event. Basically we consulted with the construction workers in implementing our design. They needed to know where and how big to drill holes. They needed to build the Leap Motion into the sink as well. We guided them through the process slowly and eventually it turned out great!

Here is a video from our website that shows it in it's final form at SCADpad. From www.behindthe.glass

Overall it was a great experience and gave us an idea of how we could implement it in other places!

Hundreds of people came and played the game since it's been at SCADpad and we've received great ideas from them! Thanks for all the support!

Here are some pics from the construction phase!

 

Crunch Time!

So now that the SCAD Pad setup is coming together, it's time to fix our game.

This whole time our has been shown and played in a landscape orientation. Our mirror at SCAD Pad however, is going to be portrait. This means we must change our game to portrait layout to properly show the game.

For this change we are choosing the monkey/climbing game because it has vertical gameplay and would be perfect to transfer to portrait view.

 Here's the current view of the game:

The new layout will be 720x1280 and displayed like this:

But to do this, there is a list of things that need to be accomplished.

First, one of our animators, Jalysa, will be editing this GIF that you see to the right. Because it's switching from landscape to portrait, there is less room horizontally. Jalysa is going to strip the background, move the foreground objects closer together, and then create a new background that will fill the negative space leftover from the new portrait layout!

As for the gameplay animations, Savannah will be editing the monkey to be more of an orange color so it will pop more on the tree. She will also be adding the second climbing animation because at the moment we only have one. This is essential just as it is with the rabbit game. We need to visually show the difference of climbing fast and climbing slow to create better user feedback!

Alice will be reshaping the background images to the fit the new vertical height. Basically she will creating tileable background images sized at 720x640. She will also be working on the win condition screen. At the moment we are thinking it will be a sign or ribbon that the monkey reaches that will tell the user that the won!

And lastly, Matt will be programming all of these new graphics into the game while also implementing the leap motion and selection screen before starting the game. 

It's been and will continue to be a very busy time for us leading up to the SCAD Pad event.

The future of Oasis

So in my last post I talked about our platform being a part of SCAD Pad in April.

Because our setup in SCAD Pad has a more personal feel to it, we have decided to add widgets to our setup; not just games.

What does this mean?

This means that instead of just having video games available to play behind the mirror, we will also have widgets for the user to view while they do their daily routines. 

In the home environment, we want to add the Leap Motion to our setup allowing them to swipe their finger through the air to choose what widget or game they want to enjoy.

Below are a couple of examples of widgets we could have behind the mirror. 

So just imagine yourself waking up, going to the bathroom and browsing the weather and stocks while you brush your teeth! Sounds awesome right? I agree.

We have a lot of work ahead of us and I'll keep the blog updated with what's happening! Seeya soon!

We are going to be featured at SCAD Pad!

We found out recently that our project is going to be featured at SCAD Pad.

What is SCAD Pad?

According to the website, it's "An interdisciplinary group of SCAD students and alumni that design every facet of a SCAD Pad (dorm room) from its architectural footprint, to the 3-D printed toilet, ALL to fit in a single parking space."

Basically, it's a micro-room for living comfortably in a small space.

During spring break, we are going to be working with the constructors in assuring that our installation is set up properly. They have already run us through the list of items they are purchasing for our installation and we can't wait to see the result!

Check out their website by clicking the image below!

Sneak peak of our animators work!

Here are some mockups from our awesome animators! As you can see, the rabbit and monkey are being completely redesigned to perfection.

They are already kicking ass. Check it out!

Gameplay video!

This is a quick iPhone video of Matt playing the game! Hope you enjoy!

We have animators!

Yep, we finally have actual animators working on the project...and they are very talented. We recruited them during a playtest at SCAD and they have now become a part of the family!

Beyond their amazing talent, they have awesome personalities!

Here they are:

Savannah Alexandra 

Animation Major 

SCAD Atlanta

Savannah's website!

Jalysa Leva 

Animation Major 

SCAD Atlanta

Jalysa's website!

So we bought a sink...

Yep, we bought a sink.

During our playtests up to now we have had problems with our playtesting hardware (tupperware container/webcam setup) not being convincing enough to people.

We need people to feel like they are washing their hands in a real sink to get the full experience of our platform and game.

So this was a long due upgrade of our hardware to give playtesters what they deserve. This will ultimately give us more accurate information from the playtests we observed.

We chose this particular vanity sink setup because the sink itself has a hole underneath the faucet which would be a perfect place for our camera to go, as shown to the left.

This vanity also has room underneath the sink for our storage needs. We will have the cords running behind it and have a place for the laptop to sit inside the cabinet so users never see the inner workings.

Matt had to drill a hole right behind the one you see to the left in order for us to get a camera to fit and face outward from the front hole. That wasn't easy but the result was perfect. Now all we need to do is hook everything up!

Before                                                        After

Grocery list for the week

So after we had our playtest, we took all of our notes from it and took the information from the survey and compiled it all together.

The main thing we observed from this is that most of the problems we noticed were due to not having an appropriate setup to playtest on.

At the moment, we are using a tupperware container as the "sink" and just attaching a household webcam to the container to pick up the hand motion inside. (shown on the left) The game itself is viewed on any monitor that we drag the cart in front of.

We plan to purchase an actual sink for the installation and have the monitor be placed behind a 2-way mirror to get an even more realistic effect.

Once we have the correct sink setup, it will make the user not take our platform and game so lightly. Users didn't seem to really imagine they were at a sink which caused many problems.

Also the camera angle was bad due to the shape of the container. Getting a sink will fix all of these issues!

For a camera, we ordered a pipe inspection camera because the one we've been using is just a household webcam and it's too bulky to fit in our sink's camera hole.

Stay tuned for more updates!

That playtest though...

So this week we did a playtest with our fellow classmates.

We have let people playtest our game/platform before but this time we tried it the professional way taught to us by our professor.

And here, we have an action shot of our friend Graham from class playing our game. As you can see, he was washing his hands in the make-believe sink we cobbled together to show our concept.

During this playtest we stood and watched our playtester's moves while they played the game. Even though our game is a short one, that made it almost more important to get our users' experiences while they played.

When making notes on the playtest we refrained from giving hints or telling the user what to do. We wanted to see if they could handle the game on their own which is our goal.

I made many random notes about each user; did they understand the mechanic to running? Did they notice the timer in the top middle of the screen? Did they win or lose? Did it require too much work to play the game?

All of these observations helped a lot in assessing whether our game/platform was on the right track!

After the playtesters were done we had them fill out a short playtest survey to get even more information out of their experiences. We made it a one page survey to make it a stress free experience for the users as well.

Here's a snapshot of our survey! We used Google Docs to create it. After they completed the survey it was sent directly to a spreadsheet for a summation of the answers. Google Docs for the win!

And there you have it! We'll see you on the flip!

Things to do!

It's our second quarter of Senior year and we have exciting things in store!

Below you will see the sprint document we created showing everything we plan to accomplish in 10 weeks.

Basically we had to sit down and think of what was most important to finish and when.

We decided that our top priorities are to finish the second video game and the physical installation/platform. 

Though our concept of playing video games via bathroom sinks is our main priority, we still need a shiny video game to get the idea across. Also we've been using a large plastic container to house the camera which has worked fine but hasn't given play testers the full bathroom experience we wanted.

And due to the growing need for data in various forms, we have decided to add a data visualization component to our platform. Essentially it will tell us how many people have been washing their hands, who didn't, and more numbers. This is an appealing feature that we are excited to work on!

Stay tuned to see our platform grow!