proJECT active is a collection of games housed in a website designed to be projected on the floor via overhead projector.

My role: UX designer and researcher. I sketched the initial design concepts, developed the low fidelity prototype in Scratch and coordinated usability testing.

Initial User Research

Literature review of previous studies regarding children and physical activity.

Interviewed a research assistant with Seattle Children's Hospital, who presented us with their work in Project PLAY.

Team picture at Seattle Children's. Left to right: Ben Wagner-Wilkins, Aylee Neff, Megan Truong, Carina Dempsey.

Ideation

Megan and Ben at Kids Team

Interactive Rug

Hoppin' Lilies

Bull's Eye

A Maze

We ran an ideation workshop with two kids in KidsTeam at the University of Washington Information School. The kids sketched ideas in response to the prompt: "How do we make a fun activity when we're inside on a rainy day?" We gained insights as to how kids like to engage in play, what aspects are important in a game, and what they enjoy. Then we sketched design concepts.

Low Fidelity Prototype

To better communicate the concept of our design we made a prototype of our initial lily pad game idea in Scratch. Check out our Scratch prototype here.

Projector Installation & Usability Testing

For usability testing we needed to hang the projector directly over the ground. We tied rope around the projector and zip tied it to the beams on the ceiling. My teammate developed a more refined version of our lily pad game in Java Script. We showed the kids the game and observed them interact with it before and after explaining the rules. Afterwards we asked them and their parents for feedback. Overall it was successful, the kids exclaimed "I love this game" and "I need more more of this game!" The parents who are both elementary teachers saw potential for various applications.

Based on the feedback we decided to:

increase the size of the lily pads
slow down the movement
increase the contrast and add visual assets to make the lily pads easier to differentiate
adjust the code so the lily pads would never overlap to decrease the likelihood of injury

Video of usability test provided with parental consent

High Fidelity Prototype

For the high fidelity prototype my teammates improved the visual assets for Hoppin' Lilies and designed visual assets for two additional concepts.

Hoppin' Lilies

Lily pads start out gray moving randomly as kids try to hop on them. Eventually the lily pads will freeze and become colored, alternating between gray and color just before to indicate that time is almost up.

Rug Exercise

A grid of 4-6 colors are projected on the floor. Each one indicating a different exercise with an animated character for the kids to follow along with.

Slime'd

Inspired by hot lava, kids try to avoid the slime by staying on the land masses as they move, change size, and shape shift.

Reflection

I am impressed with our team's ability to get the project literally off the ground despite shifting problem spaces, ambiguity, and uncertain sponsor involvement. Generally, our project was well received by our peers, instructors, and guests. Given more time we would have coded the other two games and tested them in a variety of classroom settings. We also would have experimented with different projectors and stategies to minimize shadows cast by the kids. Although, this project is far from being complete I believe it has infinite potential.

Meet the Team

This project was made possible by Aylee Neff, Carina Dempsey, Ben Wagner-Wilkins and Megan Truong (from left to right). We are all seniors studying Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. This picture was taken at the final project showcase.

Aylee Neff

User Experience Researcher