Marcy Rye
The concept for this project began as a kind of online game, but as the game specifications never seemed to truly satisfy what I was after, the concept changed radically around midyear. At this point the concept focused on the creation of a physical piece which was to meet certain requirements based on the research.
Main criteria or goals were: to create a piece that invited easy participant interaction; to design it in a way that completely hid any evidence of it being computer driven; to program a response from the piece that would encourage group participation in interaction; and to both program and design it such that it offered the possibility for people to come away understanding their individual role in the interaction, as well their relative role within the larger group of participants.
As a result, the physical design went through several iterations which changed rapidly based on user testing and surveys. The images at right show the progression of physical design concepts in reverse order, from final to initial. The entire process itself has been faithfully recorded on the thesis documentation website, essentially a journal of progress and change throughout the year.
