Video Structure

I wrote out the entire script which helped me define a structure and content for the video. It was really challenging trying to figure out the order of things and also to learn to Blender software for editing. It was overall helpful though to see the final product.

Scipt

Intro
Introduce myself, the technologies I will be working with, and the overall setup

ICMC- Interactive Colour-Mixing Carpet

This carpet focuses on introducing the concept of colour theory to young children. It uses vibrant colours as can be seen in the background, to grab the attention of such a young audience. It uses simple animation, movement displayed on the carpet that allowed children to both watch and interact with. This is to facilitate playful physical movement when interacting with carpet. It would be interesting to see if they would pretend the bird is chasing them, or trying to Cath the bird themselves. It is to encourage an open ended interaction through physical movement albeit they can lay flat on the carpet pretending to get all coins with their hands if they want to. The third function or purpose of this concept is to share practical ways of interacting with colours and sharing in discovery of deriving a new colour from the combination of two primary colours. The ICMC, interactive colour mixing carpet is a collaborative tool and aims to allow up six or more children to explore colours, play, and discover together. For those with a competitive spirit they get to score high for colouring a lot of coins.

Before User Interaction

Lets say Miss Groober is a Pre-K teacher who just loves exploring with her students. She knows her students very well and know thath the know and love to play with colours very much. She learned found out about the ICMC online and decided to install it in her classroom. She calls it the Fun With Colours section. In the morning after morning tea she tells her students “ Okay Pre-K, we will have fun doing colour-mixing today. Come over to the fun with colours corner and I will give you some gloves so you can play.”

During Usage

Each child gets three gloves, Red, Green, and Blue. Then Miss Groober says “Some coins will appear on the screen but you must use your gloves to colour our little friend beside the coin to collect it. If you don’t have a glove that looks like the coin then try using two gloves together and then tell me what happens ok? Ready? The carpet comes on with animation, light and colours. The children are sitting, standing, and walking on the carpet. There were amazed and started playing with they birds. Some Students got right into collecting coins. For each coin collected, the coin counter at the top increased so everyone was collectively picking up coins. They would put their hand on the animated little friend next to the coin. It stops moving long enough to get a new colour. They had fun and laughter with this activity.

After Use

After using the interactive colour-mixing carpet everyone shared how many coins they had. Some students shared stories they made up about the treasure chest, some shared about the birds. Miss Groober was really happy to see her students talk about the activity, colours, and imaginative stories they came up with.

That represents the full objective and planned actions for this concept. However, the carpet interface is the main implementation so far for this prototype testing. Here is a quick run through of interaction from the Unity3D platform. The current controls are still implemented at the keyboard. The final delivery is intended to use gloves however I have a few questions in that regard after this video demonstration through Unity platform.

Regarding the final delivery, to facilitate a playful hand interaction, the concept is intended to use gloves as colour input. During the testing so far I found that the gloves are a challenge to remove and replace on my hand. By the time the animated character go to a new coin it was hard to remove and replace the glove in realtime. I’m an adult, and I have pre-existing knowledge of colour theory and therefore imply it would be an even great challenge for young children still developing proprioceptively. With that in mind I think paintbrush replicas with pressure sensors would be a much more helpful tool for this audience. They can quickly mix colours or replace colours as simple as pushing on a paint brush. I welcome suggestions on what type of hand instrument may be helpful for children ages 4-6. One finding was the use of colour coded building blocks but that appeals to an audience under 4years.

Video Reflection

After watching back the video I find it could use more cutting and cropping especially when I watch videos on YouTube. For the next video submission I will definitely consider the video as a part of the prototype itself, because I find how it’s presented, or how it looks also affects how the prototype is received.