Healthy Lifestyle Research Group at THUAS
To address the decline in physical activity among primary school students by leveraging digital technology, specifically through the development of an engaging dancing game concept for the GymWall.
Interactive Game Designer - Conceptualized and developed a dancing game for the GymWall, ensuring it aligns with the motor skill development requirements set by gym educators
Research shows that primary school students have started to exercise much less than in the past. How can we stimulate children to be more active with the help of digital technology? The Research Group Healthy Lifestyle at THUAS has installed GymWall, an interactive wall with a large touchscreen where children can play all kinds of interactive games and follow training modules. As the design team, we had to develop a dancing game concept for the GymWall to help gym teachers stimulate children into doing sports activities that train specific motor skills.
On top of that, we were also asked to choose one specific emotion and create the concept based on it.
Which emotion did we choose?
We did not start right away to ideate ideas for the interactive wall. Instead, this project was first compiled by a lot of research and experiments on the emotion Fascination. After that, we brought our insights into the emotion to continue and define our design vision. Below is a process overview for this project:
Emotion is such a sentimental concept, can we emphasize with it just by words? How can a team get a common ground on the understanding of fascination then? Our team decided to first conduct desk research and then take a more creative approach to explore the emotion. In this session, I would like to focus more on showcasing our creative process.
After desk research, we tried to dive into our personal experience and exploration of visual and audio. One example is the narrative graph. From our personal experience, we created a narrative graph for each story that illustrates the different stages for emotion to be evoked. We began by recalling our own personal experience with the feeling of fascination, for example, the atmosphere, occasion, and setting where the emotion was first evoked and how the tension gradually built up over time and was eventually triggered. While the context of all our stories and encounters with fascination differs, we sorted out the commonalities. Eventually, we found patterns and tendencies where the feeling of fascination could be evoked.
We discovered that the feeling of fascination is triggered best when an unexpected discovery occurs. The discovery then has a rather explosive emotional effect on the witness, which leads to sentiments such as amazement, surprise, curiosity, impressiveness, attraction, and even admiration. As a result, the findings lead to a stage of feeling motivated and inspired, which makes the experience unforgettable in many cases.
Emotion can be trigger through different senses. Therefore, I decided to create a visual collage and my other groupmates create an audio collage in 15 mins. I won't spoil how my collage looks like, but please feel free to find it out in my blog: How visual collage has become one of my favourite research method :)
In addition, emotion is often triggered by a particular event or issue. Therefore, we wanted to design an emotion button that can provoke users to feel fascinated when interacting with the button. When it comes to a button, we tried to divide it into three elements to diverge more ideas: the appearance of the button, how to trigger and what is after.
In the end, our emotion button for fascination is the effect of the peacock spreading out its feathers with sound effects. It can be done by capturing camera input to detect the user's arm position and to stimulate the spreading motion based on distance measurement. The effect is as follows:
By grouping raw data points of similar ideas and group them into data clusters, we formed several insights in regards to how, when and under what context, that the feeling of fascination can be triggered and evoked.
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First, we mapped out the characteristics of our target group (8 to 9 years old Dutch students) through the teacher's input and case study. Then, we reviewed our research insights from our previous exploration and research regarding fascination as emotion and selected those that could also be considered for this intervention.
After we came up with different HMW, we used multiple diverging and converging to create our ideas pool. Afterward, each of us began our own concept development, bringing them to the table to discuss and refine our final concept.
Example:
Based on each HMW question, we used brain dump to throw ideas as the first step for ideation. Sketches are also made from some of these ideas. Those in orange colors are what we chose from dot voting.
With the ideas that we created with these diverging methods, we then brought them into a matrix and tried to create a storyline which then expanded as a concept development
Selection Process:
After reviewing various concepts, we unanimously selected 'Funky Funk' for its strong emphasis on music and dance, making it the most motor-activity centric option. Our research highlighted that upbeat music effectively captures fascination and boosts engagement.
Incentives & Challenges:
Our research indicated that 8-9-year-olds enjoy competition and challenges. The fighting game format, with its time constraints, pushes kids to venture beyond their comfort zones. A unique 'fever mode' is activated upon successful moves, allowing players to accumulate bonus points and experience dynamic graphics. This mode amplifies autonomy and provides a sense of accomplishment, simultaneously fueling anticipation for subsequent challenges. Our aim was to condition children to find joy in the physicality of dance.
Game Mechanics & Structure:
Unlike other concepts, this one demands users actively sync with the music, making them execute dance moves with precision and rhythm, without overcomplicating the gameplay. The simplified dance fragments are tailor-made for the 8-9 age bracket, ensuring the challenge is inviting and not daunting.
Narrative Engagement:
The game combines rhythm and fighting game elements. It features a captivating storyline where users, as heroes, aim to save 'Town Z'. This narrative approach sustains attention and prompts prolonged engagement. The rhythm-based actions help players overcome challenges, immersing them in their mission. We also use visual elements to trigger fascination. The idea is that the user may not be used to the scenery that is presented in the game, which is why the user may feel impressed, excited, and therefore fascinated. Also, the players are limited in the way they can control the visual happenings on the screen. Objects appear towards them, which are unexpected and create a tension to the players who are tackling the obstacles.
