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Monday, December 12, 2011

Meet the Gang!

Hi,

We have updated all of our profiles. You can check them out!

Some Overall Details:
  • We are: Bianca, Hoang, Leily and The Hieu
  • We are all computer scientists and have studied at the TU Berlin
  • We share the tasks as they come, so there is nobody who is responsible for a special type of tasks. As soon as we have a concrete project, we will devide the tasks. so stay tuned!
For Starters: The Brainstorming session is the results of all 4 us sharing ideas and voting for the four best ideas. Each one of us had the task to explain one of these ideas.

Cheers!

Four of 4 ... Snow Snatcher

Snow Snatcher is a mini game that can be played by users of all ages and is especially designed to be played in the winter time.

Since this game is designed to be played on public displays, it should be able to:
  • attract the attention of pedestrians, who are unaware of the existence of such a game
  • a level of this game should not take a long time
  • it should also be fun so that users are motivated to play this game more than once
  • it should not contain any content that is not suitable for children

This game can be played in single player mode. when a level starts and a user is calibrated, a pair of gloves will be drawn on the user's hands. these gloves move as the user moves his/her hands. There will be snow flakes raining on the screen and the user will have to try to hit as many snow flakes as possible with his/gloved hands. When a user hits a snow flake, it disappears. Each level is time based. When a level has passed, a snowman will appear on the screen. Depending on the number of the gathered snow flakes, the snowman will look different. Low number of flakes will result is a small and sad snowman, where as lot of snow flakes will results in a huge and happy snowman.

Subtle interaction of the user with the display is required so that the user can be detected by the Kinect and that the game can be played. For drawing the attention of passing people, demos of the game or images of the different snowmen can be displayed, while an arrow appears on each pedestrians head, and a speech-balloon will be displayed which reads "build your own snowman".

For making the game even more attractive, a scoring system can be added to the game, so that the users will play with the goal of getting the highest score. Users who make it to the high score board, can have their pictures taken and displayed.

Three of 4... Pong

The game 'Pong' is a traditional pong game. It can be played in two modes, a multi and single player mode.
In the multi-player mode two players will compete against each other. The player on the right side of the screen controls the paddle with his right hand whilst, the other player with his left hand.

In the single player mode the second player is controlled by the computer. The AI has three difficulty levels: easy, medium and hard. In both game modes the speed of the game can be configured. Also, the ball speed will be increased every 10 seconds.

This game can be played by all people who have fun playing these types of games. Players should have both arms and they should be able to move them. Players also shouldn't be too small for the game, because short players can't reach the top of the game field with their hands.

Two of 4 ... Fortune Cookie

This application is to be used in public display, with it's primary target group being waiting passengers at bus or train stations.

The concept of "Fortune Cookie" is generally known. The chinese fortune cookie is a bakery product that contains piece of paper inside it. On this piece of paper, there is a short messages, which is mostly words of wisdom. These words are suppose to guide the cookie's eater through life, or to show him what his or her fortune will be.

Since buses and trains come every 7 minutes in average, the interaction with this application should not take longer than 3 minutes. To gain people's interest there will be an animation or blinking advices of how to use this application. The user must stand directly in front of the public display (subtle interaction). In order to open a virtual fortune cookie, the passenger has the option to choose from a set of given tools to crack the cookie open. In the end the user will receive some words of wisdom.

With this design we not only want to give entertainment to the people, but some wisdom for life. The application is addresses to all who are able to read.

One of 4... StyleUp


This is the first application that i'll present you from our brainstorming session.

StyleUp! It's an application to virtually dress up a person in front of the Kinect and showing it on a large display, with the possibility to save the modeled image on a mobile phone via bluetooth.

StyleUp is an application that uses the Microsoft Kinect as mediator for changing the user's clothing using several images and skins. Passing pedestrians and passengers waiting in a bus station can view themselves on the screen and then change their appearance virtually by choosing several outfits or masks provided by our application. These outfits will put on top of user's image and be displayed. Additionally, some fancy patterns, such as frames or a short text can be added to the image.

The application requires one person who will stand front of the Kinect for subtle interaction. In order to attract pedestrians, blinking arrows will be displayed over the outline detected persons. When a pedestrian stands in front of the Kinect, s/he will be detected as our applications primary user. On each side of the screen there will be a vertical bar containing outfits, masks, text-writing-functionality, etc. as icons. In order to use these, the user needs to place his or her hand on the icon for a short period of time.

But this styling functionality will be “useless” for the users and the application will lose its attraction very fast if there aren't any options for saving user's modified image. Therefore the application will provide the functionality to take a picture of the user and to send it to a mobile phone via bluetooth. Among others, the benefit of using bluetooth is it’s fast and standardized communication method. Also, for most people it is secure enough for a public usage.

Result of brainstorming

IDEAS
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Here the results of brainstorming as image