Our project aims to ease the pain of being a frustrated pedestrian. The game allows one to pleasantly and actively pass the time remaining until the alternation of the traffic signal and in addition to connect and interact with others.
Special thanks to the miLAB’s faculty: Dr. Oren Zuckerman, Dr. Guy Hoffman and Mrs. Noa Morag for endless hours of guidance :)
1.Seems like participants are divided to 2 groups: those who know SIMON understood the interaction very quickly. Those who don’t, need more time to explore the game interaction.
2.More challenging = more fun when you progress in the game (stage 7+). We might start the patterns at 3.
3.Adults prefer to play alone but enjoy the help of their friends. Kids (up to 13) intuitively prefer to play together and divide the colors.
4. People heading in different directions are stopping and gathering around.
5.When Simon is not played the lights do not attract potential players. People are coming when they see someone else playing and willing to wait for a try.
Comments we got about design and game possible improvements:
1.Change the sounds to different and more pleasant sounds (different sets of sound)
2.Would like to step with all body on the buttons (Like the Piano in big)
3.People suggested to place Street Simon in- places where we need to wait (bus stop + queues) but also parks and kids play gardens. The popular reason was "because time passes fast while we have fun".
A few brainstorms later- we have a more accurate definition for our project.
Here are our focal points:
Living in a city can be stressful at times (especially in comparison to living on the country-side or smaller towns) and our aim is to provide a pleasant experience that will distract the pedestrians of their worries and stress
Waiting for a red light is a good time frame and location for this purpose- while we wait we get even more stressed and tend to choose stressful activities to pass the time (or not wasting it) such as checking another work related email
The game can still be played by a few pedestrians in each side but we decided to remove the "other side" scoreboard and focus on the interaction between the same-side pedestrians
The presentation went quite well, nothing exploded :)
These are the main pointers we got:
Focus on the fun aspect rather than time not wasted
While the game is engaging the pedestrians, they remain with their eyes down- less interaction among them besides playing together
Location change- a crosswalk might be dangerous, other "waiting spots" are an option. Bus stations resemble the current feel and provide a longer game period, other public spots might work as well (avenues, squares, parks, playgrounds)
User profiles- keeping individual scores, keeping each traffic light score, etc
Simplicity is one of our advantages
Moving the game to other locations (crosswalks/buss stations/etc) after a few weeks-might be boring for people that pass there every day
The psychological theories are correct but the motivation is a bit vague
Cognitive and physical advantages are significant for youngsters and the elderly
We should find our stronger features and focus on them- the game might be less attractive to a greater audience for the experience's sake
Two features we dropped along the way that were suggested:
Playing in turns between the sides- each side adds one to the pattern he got from the other side
Remaining time display
This weekend we will perform some users tests regarding the pointers we got. The main issue for us right now is the location- we will try to place the game in a few locations that are not necessarily crosswalks.
Things are going nice. And then there's a nice smell of something bruning. We are experiencing reoccuring issues with the yellow button- delayes and connectivity. We suspect that the relay.
This post will present the current technical design our button have. On the top surface there are 4 aluminum foil circles that meet the lower surface's 4 aluminum foil covered erasers when pressed. The sponge enables gradual press while the eraser is a few millimeters shorter than the sponge's height.
This is the yellow button with its guts out and a diagram
A small diagram we prepared:
We are not 100% sure that both sides will connect via Wi-Fi. We will give that a go soon.
