Final Project!
The end
of the semester is around the corner and it’s about that time of the year when
we get swamped with final projects and assignments. After discussing many areas
of Human Computer Interaction and all of its related topics, I can say that I have
learned a great deal. In last week’s lecture we looked at three different
themes that we would have to choose for our final project, they were: Change,
Glance and Time. This is quite interesting because in groups we will be all
working on accomplishing very different goals.
Change
Looking
at the first theme of change, I often think about a person’s behaviour or
attitude towards something. Change can mean many things, it can be physical,
emotional and mechanical or almost anything that alters from its original form.
For the purpose of the assignment the groups who will be working on this
particular theme will have to focus more on an individual’s behaviour. Some of
the examples that a few students were describing in class would include
exercise or learning games, where a player changes either by improving an
existing skill or learning a new skill. Some examples I can think of in today’s
gaming world would include games like Brain Age or a more physical game such as
Wii Fit. Working in video game retail and seeing children purchase the Nintendo
DS and buy Brain Age, I’ve often had to explain how it helped them learn
skills. A game like Brain Age starts at an extremely low level so that children
are able to adapt to it well. Children of the lower elementary grade levels can
also learn skills such as math and spelling. Wii Fit brought something quite
remarkable to that generation of gaming because it was the first time we were
able to play an exercise game on a console. Women in their mid-20s-30s found it
extremely interesting and would often be the consumers of this game. They would
talk about how they were able to set certain goals and the game would track
their progress. For the sake of this final project, I believe groups that are
using the Kinect Sensor would probably find this to be the most suitable
hardware to work with. The amount of things that we can do with the Kinect’s
technology can bring change in almost all physical and mechanical forms.
Glance
The
theme of glance, at first I had no idea what this even meant. After talking
about glance in our lecture I gained the understanding that it had a lot to do
with the player’s eye movement and the screen of viewpoint of the game. Things such
as the User Interface and more specifically the HUD would be in my opinion the
focus of this theme. Thinking of game like the Nintendo 64 title The Legend of
Zelda – Ocarina of Time, the dashboard and HUD were quite complex. It was one
of the games that in my opinion introduced complexity in a games user
interface. Having the C-buttons mapped out on the top of the screen with a
start menu opening the ability to see many different items was quite
complicated. This theme would be quite difficult to complete in my opinion. The
mission for the students involved in this project is to design a personal game
user interface tailored to their needs using novel technologies as stated in
the project outline. Once again I can only really think of people using the Kinect
hardware to do this. I do this imagining some playing an FPS game with the
characters hands and or gun on the screen moving to the movement of the player
with the Kinect sensor. I wonder to myself how this can be done through a brain
sensing hardware, what are some existing ideas? And how is it even possible to
tie in the connections with both the player’s brain waves and physical virtual
code. Seems a little too simple? But I say this with very little thought involved.
After all, the theme that my group has is Time.
Time
Time is a broad term that
can be manipulated in many ways both complex and extremely simple. When I think
of times in some of my favourite games, I think of the nerve wrecking puzzles
of games like Prince of Persia on the Playstation 2, where I had to pull levers
and climb to the top of buildings in a short period of time. Such an easy task
that I had to do under pressure. Or perhaps in a more recent one of my favourite
games, Sonic Generations, I had to complete one of the levels known as the
Green Hill Zone in under one minute. It was the first and easiest level of the
game, but even a time challenge like that could take hours to perfect. I
personally hate being timed when I have to complete a challenge. In my
preferred game genres, I prefer to explore and understand and search every nook
and cranny. Since I am in fact doing the theme of time for my final project I have
to think about how my group and I are going to implement it using our hardware.
We were given the hardware that uses the brain as its sensor. Something I still
fully don’t understand nor do I have a clue about how to work with. It will be
interesting to use these things. In previous video lectures we were given video
links that showed how Human Computer Interaction can change in the future in
regards to how we play games. We’ve already gained the technology to play games
without controllers and use our physical motor skills with the Kinect. Most
devices these days have eliminated the use of buttons have all become voice
activated or touch activated. Based on some of the design inspiration questions
we were presented with I think the sleep based game would be pretty interesting.
I personally have sleep issues and think that this could actually help maybe
kids and be developed to be some sort of serious game used in the medical
industry.
Image References
[Ocarina of Time HUD screenshot].Retrieved March 5, 2013,
from: URL:(http://isaiahnewbold.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/zelda-ocarina-of-time-15.jpg)
[Sonic Generations – Green Hill Zone Classic].Retrieved
March 5, 2013, from: URL:( http://press2reset.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/SonicGenerationsScreen1.jpg)
[Wii Fit Screenshot].Retrieved March 5, 2013, from: URL:(http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/unplggd/2008_04_29%20wii_fit.jpg)
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