Wizkidz
A Tangible User Interface (TUI), allows a user to interact with an application by using physical objects that are mapped (tagged) to an application. Tangible User Interfaces, provides simple and highly interactive experiences within the applied space.
Games are an ideal application for TUI’s and is often a key area of research in the gaming industry. Games especially those that target children, can therefore, take advantage of this direct manipulation technology and provide a fun and natural gameplay experience that better aids in the development of a child’s ability to solve and resolve problems critically.
Services
Human Computer Interaction
User Experience Research
User Experience Design
Games Development
Client
Middlesex University | London
mdx.ac.uk
The problem
Develop an Interactive kids puzzle game utilizing related technologies and techniques.
- The game should have a “Tangible” interface which provides interaction using tagged objects.
- The game should be educational and also stimulating to the user
- Provides different levels of challenges to the user - more elements during gameplay to increase the difficulty of questions
My Role
For this project, I was chosen as the Team Lead and Developer. I managed and motivated the team to ensure we met our milestones and final goal in producing a novel interactive product. Over the period of the project, I researched and implemented computer vison technologies to create WizKidz as per design requirements. I also assisted with artwork and sound editing.
The solution
From our ideation sessions, we settled on the name Wizkidz. WizKidz was a puzzle-based game geared towards a single user between ages 5-8. The game makes use of captivating graphics that the player would find very amusing and attractive. Questions within the game are asked based upon the environment shown on the game screen, which is a good way of providing a hint for the answer.
The initial game categories that were considered were: Outdoor, Hobbies and Animals. These categories were chosen, as children could easily relate to them during the early years of growth and development.
WizKidz is linear based and the user can only progress though the game by answering each question correctly. The cognitive ability of the user is constantly tested and by rewarding the user with each correct answer and a game completion medal, gives the player a great feeling of satisfaction emotionally and mentally.
Development
Ideation + Storyboarding
The Player performs an educational role by Identify missing objects (Outdoor hobbies, Different types of Animals, Recognize the sound of different Animals).
Game Mechanics
- The game begins by displaying a start menu that prompts the user to move to a category selection menu
- There are three questions for each category which has three answers per question
- Correct answers rewards the users with a well done screen and audio effects likewise an incorrect screen for each incorrect answer
- Category completion, rewards the user with a medal
- Using the appropriate Gameplay Object (fiducials), the user is able to make a selection by pointing the fiducial to the camera
Prototyping
The game is played using two types of controllers:
- “Wizvigator” is used for menu navigation
- “Flash Cards” consists of different answers for the game
Coding
The core technology that powers the game are Processing and reactivision
- Processing creative toolkit used to develop the games 2D environment. Processing is also used to proccess audio and generate animations within the game.
- reacTIVision a cross-platform computer vision framework for the fast and robust tracking of fiducial markers attached onto physical objects. reacTIVision will track fiduals via a camera and commuicate the data to processing via the TUIO protocol.
Outcome
Overall, the team felt that we did achieved what was set out in the requirements in delivering a product that Is designed to Educate and Stimulate the minds of kids. However, we do believe there is still a lot of room for improvement but, these improvements will be implemented in future game releases.
It did take a tremendous amount of effort for me to quickly understand and implement the technologies required to develop the game.
Final Product:
