Meeting with Amal

Here's a summary of what we discussed today with Amal.

The fan implementation yields mixed results, which is fine, since our project is built upon exploration, allowing each player to discover their own niche with the application. The problem is that the fan's visual effect is forced upon all the players, whether or not they were interested in it. This defeats the solution of trying to make the fan effect an objective, since it would only cater to those who want to experience the effect, and lead to further distraction for those who do not particularly want it.


We have to make a decision about what we want the fan to do. If we want it to remain as a passive-aggressive indicator that the wall is being wiped (i.e. "game over"), then I say we leave it as is. Its success in slowing down doodlers is apparent (if not particularly "fun"), and those who enjoy the effect can go on enjoying it.


If we were to go another route and implement the fan but scale back its universality. Heres a short list of suggestions that were made:

1) Make the fan's visual effect change to something simpler. When the fan turns on, that all tiles currently spinning receive a "second wind" which turns their velocities up and keeps them spinning a little longer. This would not disturb tiles currently not spinning. The effect would be that the children's drawings would remain unfaded just a little longer. We would also be safer from the chain reaction bug the magic tile exhibited yesterday. We might even accompany this with a shrill whistle crescendo.

2) Instead of turning tiles the fan would just blow partivles, or dust, in the screen. This way the kid's are not confused as to if they have to stop spinning more tiles or not. However, one disadvantage to this is that there's not a strong connection between the fan and the tiles.

3) Change how the fan is triggered. Currently the fan starts spinning every two minutes for 10 seconds. Change this so that the fan starts to spin as soon as the magic tile is spinned x (30?) amount of times. We can display numbers for the number of times the magic tile is spinned so that the kids can more easily figure out the reason why the fan is spinning.


We also wanted to keep our ideas conservative because of time limits, and because we have no more opportunities for observations.

As Amal noted a few times, we have to keep in mind that in a open house demo environment, there is no guarantee of how audiences will shift in and out.