DONE FOR
University Project
TEAM
Lena Vakulenko
Jumanah Al Asadi
Lukundu Lako
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ROLE
Interaction Designer
Illustrator
Developer
TOOLS
Photoshop
Visual Studio
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Campfire Kinect
About
Our team wanted to build an interactive installation that would connect people at museums or public events. Our group used natural elements and human interaction to deliver an engaging experience for users.
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Campfire Kinect is an interactive installation, featuring a campfire, and users tracked by Microsoft Kinect Camera. The goal of the installation is for the users to keep the fire going by helping each other with their hands and bodies. Obstacles such as rain, wind and bears appear to endanger the fire but the user must protect it with their body to shelter it for survival.
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The goal of the installation is to engage random strangers that pass by it, for example in a museum or event. It should automatically attract the attention of people because of its size and sound. Social Embarrassment was a big factor in designing this interaction. Users would be able to engage with the installation at any time with ease. They should also be able to leave at any time and have other users replace them easily. It would be a seamless experience.
My Role in the Project
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User Experience
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Interaction Design
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Designing the assets for the installation such as artwork and graphics
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Programming the day to night progression and the Bear animation.
Target User
The target users for this installation are families and kids, as it is very common for families (adults & kids) to sit around a campfire, so the users should be able to recognize what to do to keep the fire burning. The installation can be situated in museum, for example the museum of civilization or nature because of its nature and survival theme.
Flow
The primary message behind the interaction is to protect the fire in a changing environment.
The interaction never explicitly ends, but will reset after each night cycle. Users are welcome to join at any time and interact with the fire and help keep the fire alive. The threats will be created at random to make the interaction more interesting. Time progresses, from night until morning and the duration of the ‘survival’ will be approximately five minutes. As the night goes on there will be different obstacles, animations and interactions to keep the participants entertained.
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Features
Fire is the main interaction of the installation. The main goal for participants is to keep the fire burning as obstacles are thrown their way.
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Participants will also be able to engage with the surrounding environment to maximize the experience. For example, by touching trees, leaves, or bushes fireflies will emerge. If the fire is growing then animals, such as bears will visit the camp fire and participants will need to scare the bear.
User fire interaction
Once kinect detects the person his or her silhouette will spear on the screen showing that they are in the simulation.
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To prevent the fire from dying completely, users can add pieces of wood into the camp fire, that way flames will grow and create sparks.
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User Bear interaction
One of the obstacles the installation has is the bear. The bear will come and try to stop the fire the user would have to squat to make the bear go away.
Later on user testing showed that people were putting their hands down in order to scare the bear. For that reason squatting gesture was changed.
User wind interaction
Another obstacle is the wind. In order to protect the fire the user have to use their body.
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Since the wind is transparent I chose to use leaves as an indicator. That way the user could easily identify the direction of the wind.
User Rain interaction
Rain is the other obstacle, users would have to collaborate together in order to shelter the fire.
Puppet Skeleton
Sine the simple silhouette would not match the art style I was working the puppet design for the kinect skeleton. To stay consistent with the theme the team decided to go with the camping theme and I created two versions of Bigfoot silhouettes. The fist one is cartoon like and the second one is more realistic. During the sprint meeting the team decided that the cartune like Bigfoot looks puppet looks the best with the environment.
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