Persona: Belinda

Age: 28

Profession: Promoter

Belinda grew up in Argentina as an only child of a high school teacher and an accountant. After she graduated from college 2 years ago, Belinda moved to Berlin as she accepted a job offer from a local promotion agency.

Her job demands a high degree of mobility and due to the fact that Belinda does not have a driver's license, she depends solely on public transport.

Although she is participating in a language course since her arrival in Germany, she still struggles with the language and therefore mostly communicates in English.

Belinda only has very limited knowledge of computers and does not own one herself. However, she owns an IPad, which she uses to check on her e-mails and play casual games from time to time.

Task done by: Benedikt

Our scenarios!

Task done by: Benedikt

Interview Questions

As an assignment, we were to come up with interview questions and interview three people, so that with get an idea of what the users will think of our application (Pong).
Designing this question sheet and interviewing was done by: Leily & The Hieu
The Findings will be posted separately.


The interview agenda is the following:

Phase 1: General Questions

Introduction: Hello, we are a group involved in a university project that is aimed to entertain people waiting in Bus/Tram/Train stations using public interactive displays. In this regard, we would like to ask you some questions. These questions are really intuitive to answer because there is no right or wrong. They will be about your person and about your opinion to our project. We are collecting these data and will evaluate them for a better usage of our application. And of course, all your information and answers will be treated strictly confidential! So, let’s begin if you are ready.

• Personal questions: sex, age, education, languages , job, left/right handed
• Which public transport system do you generally use no matter to work or in free time?
• How often do you use it/them per day? Per week?
• How long do you wait for the public transport at the station in average?
• What are you doing while waiting at the station?
• Have you ever experienced motion interaction? e.g. EyeToy or Kinect?
• On a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is the “Very Interested”, to what extend are you interested in interacting with public displays? Especially with display sizes of about 1.2m x 1,8m and in public! And why?
• If you are interacting with or using a public display by motion interaction, would you like to use both hands?
• How would you feel about interacting in public?
  

Phase 2: Questions regarding Pong

So, that was the first part. Now we are getting to the part with your opinion about our gaming application Pong which is designed for the users during their waiting time at a public subway, bus or train-station [We Explain Pong]. Now, I would like to ask you some general questions first. And just like before, your data will be treated strictly confidential.

• Would you be interested in a playing Pong in single player or multi player mode? And why?
• How much time would you spend in interacting with our application? Just until the next transportation comes or longer, if the application makes fun?
• Are you interested in a level-wise game design or an on-going game? Why?
• Does the concept of this game attract your attention for interacting with it? And why?
• How often would you use this application daily if you had the time?
• Do you have any concerns about privacy issues when other passengers you playing/interacting at the station?
• Are you interested in a scoring and system ranking in game? And what about the privacy issues there?
• Would you prefer using both hands or just one?
• a) Are there any objects or obstacles that would hinder you in interacting using both hands with the display? E.g. handbag or carrier-bag…
• b) Which hand do you prefer?
  

We are almost done with the interview.

• Do you have any further questions or remarks, ideas that can be integrated/replaced in our application and tell me why?
• Do you have another idea/location for the public-entertainment?
  

Thank you very much for your time!

Task done by: all

And the Winner is....

Initially we had 4 interesting project ideas:

1. StyleUp
2. Fortune Cookie
3. Pong
4. Snow Snatcher

You can find an entry to each of these projects in this blog. In a team meeting, each member voted for the projects that s/he thought were the most appropriate ones for being implemented later. Though we liked all of ideas, we decided that Pong would be project that we will execute.
And the winner is...Pong!
Applause, please!

Meet our Newest Gang Member!

We now officially have a new member! Benedikt studies Human Factors and we are very happy to welcome him to the ScaMPIs:)

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.