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Indigeous Peoples
Research performed during the User Seminar's class senior year (2008) regarding stories and indigeous peoples of British Columbia. Written up to be included in publication.
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RESEARCH
User Research
Summer 2008
Advising professor:
Prof. Patricia Search
Team members:
Amanda Rotondo
Marsha Harner
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Wriggle Project
Wriggle is a research project that hopes to discover the contagion of emotions through motion and gesture in gaming. An evolving project, first being based purely on gesture and morphing into various minigames to explore the variety of motion and emotion created during gameplay. It has since evolved into a broader scoped project with much more input and participation from fellow professors, students, and industry professionals.
Having been inspired by previous research on how different shapes of objects influence emotion towards them, the Wriggle project went on to explore how creating gestures could be manipulated through gameplay, both on the side of the player and from the game itself.
The Start
Through use of the motion capture lab, we played with various objects, such as a back scratcher and foam sword. We placed motion capture points on various point of the objects and recorded the gestures we made with them in free play. It was discovered that objects such as swords often had strong, jerky movements, whereas the back scratcher was often treated more like a wand. This lead to the idea of creating an interface in which multiple users share a canvas, and with individual Wiimotes, control the color and the shape placed on the canvas. The users would be provided an emotion they were either supposed to portray or try and influence on the other player, through only controller usage. I programmed a prototype of this design in MAX/MSP/Jitter. After this prototype, it was determined to go a route of creating wearables for the users to directly interact with the game at hand. The actions of the users would invoke emotions, opposite of how users typically interact with games. For this, a set of wearable hats were created to house a Wiimote to record the motion of the players, imitating the characters in the game. The goal was to create a product that had a very DIY feel.
A prototype was created that focused on evoking the right actions to control the character and affect the user's emotions.
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GAME RESEARCH
Undergrad Research
2006-2008
Advising professor:
Prof. Katherine Isbister
Team members:
Rainey Straus
Professor Shawn Lawson
Professor Curtis Bahn
Noah Schaffer
Corey Nolan
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CapAbility Games Project
Overview presentation
The Albany Center for Disabilities presented the issue of acclimating those who are disabled but gaining independence back with a grocery store setting. The grocery store is one of the first steps of independence for the their clients, and allowing them to gain a feel for the grocery store before entering a physical one is very important.
To achieve our final product, a lot of observation and interviews were required. We visited the Center for Disabilities to gain an idea of what the daily activities and audience we would be designing for. We also followed a client around a grocery store, with a video camera at head level of the client, to gain a better understanding of their perspectives when traversing the aisles. Objects that held up products soon became dangerous objects, as they were at eye level with the clients. Glass items became serious obstacles to avoid. It was a very rewarding experience for the design of the product.
Many iterations of the project were completed before the final design was settled on. Factors like money (price comparison, budget) and time constraints were considered out of scope for the purpose of the simulation. We realized it was more about the experience of becoming acclimated with how aisles work than the finer details of the experience, especially since most clients have an assistant with them during their outings.
Determining the interface was another design challenge for us. The clients have a very wide variety of mobility constraints. While some can control things with their hands, others only have head mounted devices. We ended up going with a joystick controller and a head-mounted button controller, that could be swapped out depending on the user.
 The layout of the grocery store was modeled based upon the floor plan of a local Price Chopper that was provided to us. Many of the textures came directly from the store itself through high quality photography.
 A wizard character was created to interact with the users in game. He was created so the users could identify with a helper character and help make the experience a positive one. The motion capture lab at RPI was utilized so the character would have very open and welcoming gestures. The gestures recorded via motion capture were then rigged to the character model.
The final project was placed in the Albany Center for Disabilities in the Spring of 2008 for usage by the clients. It was at this time, written up in local newspapers and received local TV news coverage.
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SIMULATION RESEARCH
Undergrad Research
2006-2008
Advising professor:
Prof. Kathleen Ruiz
Team members:
Zach Barth
Peter Mueller
Terry Lucas
Darren Dimingos
Benjamin Esposito
Niraj Shrestha
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