Interaction and Interface Design

On Saturday, November 22, our team met with our kid design partners Rolanda, Garreth and Steven for the purpose of testing our game prototype. Design team members Amy, Larry K, and Larry W conducted the test with Amy serving as team spokes person, Larry W as game play controller and moderator, and Larry K as the observer and note taker for the test.
During the audio/visual set up, before the kids arrived, we experimented with various projector setups. Various ideas had been discussed at previous meetings about the best way for the team to simulate an Eye Toy interface. We eventually came to the conclusion that a single projector set up was the best solution. Positioning the player between the projector and the screen allowed us to use the player’s shadow as the ‘avatar’ for the game. The player was then able to interact with the game interface by ‘touching’ the screen with the shadow of their hands.
We started the test with team member Amy explaining the story line of the game. She then showed the kids the game screen, explaining how each of the elements on the screen facilitated the game play. After explaining how the game works, the initial feedback from the kids seemed positive. Garreth especially like the idea of how the pitch control mechanism worked, noting that he had some experience reading music.
At this point, we let the kids actually play the game. First up was Garreth, who seemed to get the hang of the required movements of game play fairly quickly. He was particularly successful at using the pitch control mechanism. Although the musical staff of the game was fairly high on the wall and seemed difficult to see from the players standpoint, Garreth still was able to ‘read’ the music on the staff in an efficient enough manner to successfully execute game play.
At one point during Garreth’s first round of play, he discovered the part of the game where bottles are thrown from the audience – a game element triggered when a player is doing particularly poorly. At this point, the player must dodge the bottles by moving their bodies out of the way of the bottles trajectory. For a while, Garreth intentionally did poorly so that he could dodge the bottles. The team feared that this aspect of the game may coax the player into intentionally doing poorly to trigger this ‘fun’ part of the game. Fortunately, the reward of getting a higher score outweighed the temptation to dodge bottles, and this part of the game play did not become problematic.
Garreth eventually finished the game with a score of 16,000 points in his first round of play, and 28,400 points in his second.
The next kid to play the game was Steven (aka ‘Bob the Chicken’). Like Garreth, he too quickly acclimated himself to the movements required to play the game, although he had more trouble with the pitch control aspect of the game. When a pitched song event was indicated in the game play, Steven was more likely to just hold his hand over the pitch control without making the required up and down movements. Since our game feedback mechanism was being particularly generous, it is likely that Steven was not being properly penalized for this inaction. As a result, he did not work to improve this aspect of his game play.
Steven finished his first round with a score of 17,400 and his second round with a score of 25,100.
Next up was Rolanda. She too had problems grasping the pitch control aspect of the game play, but still was able to quickly figure out the other elements of the game. The way she played the game brought out an interesting phenomenon. Because this game was quickly prototyped, the music events on the screen (especially the drum parts) didn’t always match exactly to the song that was being played. When Rolanda played the game, and there was a long string of drum events to be played, she tended to hit the drums in rhythm with the audio track. The team found this observation to be interesting in that it demonstrated that the kids where not only reacting to events on the screen, but also acting on what they were hearing as well. This was a satisfying finding, proving to the design team that kids where making the audio/visual connection imbedded into the game play.
Rolanda’s first round of play netted her a score of 23,300 points, while her second round netted 32,000 points.

Sticky Notes Session
Some interesting comments were made by the kids during the sticky notes session. The most illuminating positive comment was made by Garreth, who remarked that the game was ‘fun right now’. He further clarified this point by saying that other game prototypes that he had encountered seemed like they would be fun after further development, and that this game really fun even though it was still an early prototype.
The kids also noted that the game was easy to understand yet challenging to play, making playing it for the first time fun. They also like the part of the game where the audience throws money and bottles. These extra bonus game play events seemed to make the game more challenging and rewarding. The kids also like the fact that the game was physically engaging, and found value in the exercise that playing the game provided.
Even with the mention of exercise as a positive aspect of the game, one kid commented that getting tired was a bad aspect of the game. Other negative comments included that fact that the game only had one song. It was explained to the kids that this was only a prototype, and that the final product would include a multitude of songs of different genre. Another negative comment was that there was only six possible interface items on the screen. The kids thought that more interface widgets would make the game more challenging, making the game more fun.
The kids also had many helpful suggestions for features to be added to the game. They all agreed that having different career paths in the game would be fun. These career paths could include different genres of music and playing concert circuits appropriate for that style of music. The kids also suggested the game should be challenging right away, but not so hard that it would make them give up. They talked about games that they had played in the past that were too easy in the beginning, making them not very fun. The kids agreed that our song was challenging enough for a first attempt, and that the songs should get more difficult as the game progressed.
Other suggestions included making the crowds more unforgiving as the game progressed. This suggestion coincides generally with the concept of making the game more challenging as the player moves farther into the game. There was also a suggestion that called for giving the player the ability to throw things back at the audience, or to be able to crowd surf and stage dive. Multiplayer game play was also recommended by the kids.

Conclusion
Overall, the prototype seemed to be a great success. This was proven by the kids desire to play the game again and again. The kids input before and after the design of the prototype really helped the design team find game play that would be fun for the kids. The entire process seemed to be both productive and successful.

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Links to game sounds:
http://extrafancy.net/idia612/audio/don’tFunkWithMyHeart_pitchUpLittle.mp3
http://extrafancy.net/idia612/audio/don’tFunkWithMyHeart_pitchUpAlot.mp3
http://extrafancy.net/idia612/audio/don’tFunkWithMyHeart_pitchDownLittle.mp3
http://extrafancy.net/idia612/audio/don’tFunkWithMyHeart_pitchDownALot.mp3
http://extrafancy.net/idia612/audio/boos.wav
http://extrafancy.net/idia612/audio/applause.wav

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So, it appears from the three previous posts that we are in agreement with the overall high level concept of the Eye Toy game in which we are working. In short, we have decided to create a game where a player or players are aspiring to be musical superstar. To achieve this end, the player must work his/her way through the live music circuit, playing show venues that span from the smallest, seediest nightclubs, all the way to the largest, most prestigious arena venues. During these ‘shows’, the player must ‘play’ along to the game soundtrack by activating and ‘playing’ each of the instruments and ‘singing’ the vocals. These interactions will be activated by the player using his/her whole body, with the Eye Toy as the interactive medium. The more accurately the player ‘plays’ the song, the more points he/she will score. The more points the player scores, the faster he/she will move through the concert circuit.

Now that the basic concept of the game is completed, we must now figure out how the player’s interactions will control the music in the game. This has proven to be a bit difficult, so we as a group have decided on a two prong approach to solve this problem.

First, we looked to another game with a similar theme. The game Donkey Konga is a game where the user plays a conga interface (the conga controller is included with the game) to play the beats that accompany the game soundtrack. The more accurately the player plays along with the music, the more points he/she scores. This is similar to our game concept, yet the Donkey Konga only has to deal with the rhythm of one instrument. Our game will not only be tracking the rhythm of multiple instruments, it will also have to track melodies as well! And, our controller is the entire human body put in front of a video camera.

Where Donkey Konga did give us a good idea was in the way the music is ‘notated’ in the game. The player must follow along with the music by following the rolling barrels. A set of color coded barrels roll from right to left on the screen. At the left hand side of the barrel’s path is a target. When the barrel reaches the target, the player must hit the appropriate conga (congas come in pairs). A barrel of one particular color indicates a hit on the left conga; another color indicates a hit on the right one. Still another color indicates hitting both congas, while a fourth color indicates that the player must clap his/her hands. What we must do now is find a way to modify this indication mechanism to fit our game where both rhythm and pitch must be performed by the player.

Our second strategy was to pick some songs to listen to, and come up with ways that we could have players ‘play’ the songs with there body movements. For this exercise, we picked the following songs:

Songs for Prototyping
We Will Rock You
Bohemian Rhapsody
Devil Wen’t Down to Georgia
Is This Love
Don’t Funk With My Heart
Black Magic Woman

So for next week, each of our group members are going to take these songs, listen to them, and come up with ideas for the interface of the game. Our biggest challenges will be to figure out how the player will indicate pitch and rhythm, how the player will determine which intrument they will be playing at any one time, and how the game will ‘notate’ on the screen what they player’s next gameplay musical action will be.

-LK

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