Experience Technology

This weekend we went to the shopping mall in Lyckeby, to buy all the material we need to our sound wall. unfortunately, we did not get everything we needed, but we will solve it in another way. Tomorrow we are going to begin with the building of the wall! :)

Here are some pictures of us shopping plywoodboards and stripes:

Today we had two deadlines: complete the project plan and do peermarking on two of the Hyper Island Stockholm groups. Both of these deadlines were connected since the peermarking were to be based on the project plans. Since Cecilia was out of town today we were only four in our group. We decided to divide the two peermarkings between us in the group, rather than all working on both. Max and I took care of group 8 STO (Stockholm) while Susanna and Filip handled the peermarking of group 5 STO. It did take longer than I anticipated, so it was a good thing than we divided them between us and wrote them simultaneously. We did finish them well within the deadline, though.

Apart from the peermarking the work on our Sound Memory Game proceeds according to plan. Max began structuring and collecting sound effects that we're going to use. Filip has been researching Flash tutorials and is more confident than ever that this program will be a challenge, but definitely not impossible. Susanna has begun the work with the Exhibition Team and the marketing process has thereby begun. I have solved the mystery with how to connect wires to the keyboard circuit-board and has prepared a connection schedule that will be implemented on the wall frame.

Today we had a tech support meeting with Nikolaus Theologou from GamePort, and he gave us some nice information about how to hack and modify the wireless keyboard we are about to use in our project. After the meeting we all decided to go for the sound memory idea.

We started off with taking apart the keyboard, but we then realized that it was pretty new and for that reason didn't have the circuit board we wanted, so we started looking around at school for other keyboards. We found a bunch of them but they all looked the same as the first one, but we were lucky enough to get some help from Dennis, who had a solution to the keyboard problem, so that we could use the one we got in the beginning.

The rest of the day got dedicated to write our project plan, but first we decided roles and responsibilities within the groups and everyone in the group got an area to be responsible for during this project.



Here is a sketch of the wall. We have developed the concept a bit and it is now a multiplayer game where two persons compete with each other. When you press a square it trigger a sound and the goal is to try to find another square with the same sound. You win if you have collected more pairs then your competitor when the game is over.

Today we also wrote a schedule with clear deadlines, so we know what to do - and when, in order to be as organized as possible. We're really excited about this project and it sure will be some really fun weeks!

This is the blog for group 3 in Experience Technology.
You are going to see personal posts from the different group members as the project evolves, where we will share our own perspective on the project. Right now, this is me, Susanna writing.

Yesterday we got our assignment in experience technology, where each group has to create a solution that involves one or several components that they are assigned. Take a part and build something new. We got a wireless keyboard and mouse, which to send key presses and mouse movements to a computer.

Now, we have been exploring what can be measured and controlled by key presses and mouse movements. How it can be turned into an interface, and we have some ideas about our project. We have been brainstorming, and found out some ideas we like. Tomorrow we will speak to Nikolaus Theologou from GamePort, and find out wheter our ideas is technically possible to carry out.

Here are some sketches of our ideas. We are all into doing a game, and want it to be interactive in some way. The first one is about using the key-technology to do a memory game, on the wall, with sound. Instead of memorize pictures, you have to memorize different sounds.
The second is based on the game hang man, where wou stand on a "carpet" with letters, and a have a big screen in front of you. When you stand for 5 seconds, the letter turns up on the screen, and you play the game. Then you stand on another letter and see if that matches to the word.
The third one is about moving the surface instead of the mouse, and use the technology togheter with a flash-game. We were thinking of tetris and maybe do a game with the same basic idea. One of the ideas is an icecream-game, where you manouver the cone and try to catch the right icecream-flavours. So you get an order of an icecream, and then you have to do it right, otherwise you loose money. So, you steer the "board" with a joystick and looks at a big screen and try to manouver it.





Since we don´t know which project we are going to develop, we have not decided any roles in our group yet. Tomorrow we will organize everything with a project plan, roles, structures, when we know what project we vill use.
Today we also had a group follow-up which I think everyone in the group was satisfied with. We now know how to do things better in a clear way.