Cornerstone Interactive Games

These are features from some early cornerstone projects from a first year general engineering course that, while quite small in their technical scope, do involve some interesting prototyping

and UI Design.

---

The task for this first one was to create an interactive game themed around an engineering failure. My group and I decided to make a mystery puzzle to solve what went wrong with a model blimp. After we determined details of the actual gameplay, I set out to make the physical model.

Preliminary Sketches and Cardboard Prototype

When I had a carboard prototype put together, we gathered some feedback about what worked well and what didn't, and I moved on to a sturdier laser cut version.

Cardboard Version to Wooden Model

Finally, we designed an Arduino console that would display hints about different components of the blimp to help the player solve the puzzle.

---

This next project had a similar prompt to create an interactive, carnival style game. My group and I agreed that something with simple rules, and some physical involvement would be most exciting, so I came up with this design centered around launching a toy car down a track with a hammer, and trying to score the top speed.

Preliminary Sketches and 'Promotional' Poster

The first big challenge was coming up with a durable, reliable device to convert the downward impact of a hammer into a horizontal push on a model car. I came up with this simple slider mechanism made out of laser cut plywood, 1/2" dowels and elastic bands to reset it to an upright position.

Test Assembly and Final Mock-Up

Cotter pins were used for construction so that a set of replacement parts could be installed easily if anything broke during usage. The entire model could be torn down and serviced in about a minute.

Once we had the basic prototype it was time to conduct some user testing, at which point we found that the mechanism functioned great overall, but the construction of the hammer was our biggest challenge for reliability.

It was difficult finding an optimal balance between a hammer that was heavy enough to push the car well, but light enough to avoid breaking wooden components. The solution I came to was a composite hammer with a weighted wooden center surrounded by very low density EPS.

Assembly of Composite Hammer and Comparison to Original Design

Once the physical mechanisms were in order, we made a speed sensing gate using two staggered infrared sensors controlled by an Arduino, and had it display players' scores to a laptop. In order to determine a 'profitable' system of prizes relative to the cost to play, we conducted more user testing and gathered data through MATLAB regarding average speeds and win to loss ratios. This allowed us to finalize our code and prize tiers in a way that the game would be profitable, but still engaging and win-able for the general public.

While both of these projects were pretty simple to execute, they involved a considerable amount of user testing and iteration based on feedback on issues that were not immediately obvious from within the group.

Speed Trap 'Promotional Poster' for User Testing