Somatic Super Mario
DESCRIPTION
When a classic game encounters advanced technology
I designed sets of motion interaction, connected Super Mario with Kinect, and conducted usability tests as evaluation.
MY ROLE
Interaction Design
UX Research
Overview
Mission
To explore motion interaction for a classical video game
Process
1. Define
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State-of-art research
2. Design
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two sets of somatic control methods
3. Prototype
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develop a prototype with Kinect and FAAST
4. Test
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usability tests
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system usability scale
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interviews
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Outline
Team & Collaboration
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Team of 4
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Closely collaboration within the project team;
receiving feedback from the supervisor
Outcome
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Demonstration video
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Final report
Background
With the spread of Kinect, players now have more access to interact with games. However, there are still many classical games on traditional platforms. Their interaction is based on the controller or keyboard. These games are deeply loved by players, but the unnatural and unsmooth interaction between players and games limits the immersive experience.
Thus, we aim at improving the gaming experience on classical games by redefining the interaction and transforming a classical game to play with Kinect.
Procedure
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Define:
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State-of-art research
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Build the environment
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chose game Super Mario Bros​
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software set-up
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Design:
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Defined somatic controls by mapping body motion with the game's original operation
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Prototype:
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Kinect for detecting the player's movements
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FAAST (Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit) to map the body motion with keyboard input
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Evaluation:
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Within-group usability test
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Questionnaires, including a system usability scale
- Interview
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Result & Learning
Though our initial goal was to design the most natural interaction, we quickly realized that it's not that easy. It seems intuitive that asking the player to "walk" or "jump" as well, but it would be too tiring and we didn't want to make it like a game for exercising. Thus, to make frequent operations easy, the body motions were serving as "commands".
The tests showed that although somatic control was interesting and entertaining, keyboard controls were easier for players.
In the test, we also noticed the "inertia". The participants were asked to try two different somatic control methods. And the sequence for each participant was different. They often regard the control method learnt first simpler than another.