Placement Update

I had my second placement interview on monday. This placement was at the Peninsula Medical School, working in the the E-Learning department. After a few tests and a 3 panel interview I was offered the job! I’ll still be looking for placements just for interview experience, although if a better offer comes along who knows what will happen?!?!

The Clip

The Culture Jamming clip is now available to view on YouTube:

Facts about Coca Cola…

Coca-cola was originally promoted as a drink “offering the virtues of coca without the vices of alcohol.” Until 1903, a typical serving contained 60mg of cocaine. Today, it still contains an extract of coca leaves. The Coca-Cola Company imports eight tons of coca leaf from South America each year — a substance that, if carried into the country by any regular citizen, would result in their arrest and incarceration for “drug trafficking…” - http://www.naturalnews.com/003228.html

It’s no coincidence that the name “Coca-Cola” starts with the name of the leaf used to manufacture cocaine: the coca leaf. From the late 1800’s, Coca-Cola contained varying amounts of cocaine (about 60mg of cocaine per serving in 1900) all the way up until 1929, when cocaine was finally removed from its formula.

The “Cola” part of the name comes from the “kola” nut — a nut containing yet an addictive chemical: caffeine. Combine caffeine and cocaine and, not surprisingly, you get a powerful drink called “Coca-Cola” that benefited strongly (from a marketing point of view) from the addictive traits of the narcotic / caffeine combination.

I thought that this would be a very good target for the product to de-face there are many issues which could be raised. One problem is that no-one really reads the bottle, its not a new product. This should work in my favour when I start to replace the labels.

Re-code

From a previous lecture we were shown a satirical clip which done roughly what i’m setting out to do. The website, Re-code.com, says it does not advocate relabeling items in stores. The website operators say the whole site is just a satire, but Wal-Mart isn’t laughing. “The Re-Code.com website is a complete mockery of the Priceline.com website which promotes the concept of “Name your own price.” Re-Code.com only attempts to take this advertisement to its logical conclusion. The goal of the project is to create a new space for political satire using products that already exist in stores. The audience for this form of art/activism becomes the cashiers and shoppers at targeted stores.” But Wal-Mart says Re-code.com “provides a forum for consumers to share and print out bar code information for inexpensive items in stores such as Wal-Mart, and then take them to Wal-Mart and place them on top of the legitimate bar code for more expensive items.” Re-code.com admits that its sample bar codes are based on products found at Wal-Mart. The point, says Re-code.com, is to “raise awareness about the true cost of products”. “What if products were not subsidized,” Re-code.com asks. “What if the price of motor oil was directly tied to the price of human life? What if a rifle cost the same as a Care Bears movie?”

The clip can be found by following THIS link.

What i’m going to do…

Now that my research has piled up I have decided to make an attempt at Culture Jamming. After looking through all of the privacy research with regards to tracking user and keylogging etc I found that this woul dbe the easiest and legally safest one to pursue. Although I have already pointed out that my intentions are not malicious I would like to stress that whatever is produced isnt not meant to cause harm.

I’ve been brainstorming what I can do, one idea that me and aqeel came up with is to get a product like Sunny D which has loads of E numbers and isnt even Orange Juice and re-label it. I could photoshop a label then film me going in to attach the new label. Sort of like the Re-Code clip that we watched in University.

I’ve always been against the way large supermarkets are taking over from all the smaller chains. Shopping at supermarkets is destroying British agriculture and ruining the countryside. 60-70% of all food now passes through three companies; Tesco, Sainsbury and Asda. This control over the food chain allows supermarkets to determine the price they pay to farmers, with farmers forced to take that price due to there being no other buyer left in the market place. Big farmers are getting bigger to survive while small farmers are going bust, leading to farming monoculture and unemployment.

Supermarkets are owned by people who don’t live locally, or even in the same country. The money you spend there does not go back into the local economy, whereas money spent in independent shops tends to stay in the local economy.

So here is my idea after much pondering…

I’m going to re-create the Coca Cola brand label for a 500ml bottle. Film me putting the label on then getting a friend to buy the product with its new label on, I may be sneaky and put a few more labels on there and just leave them. The label shall have things which the effects of too much Cola does to your body.

Here is an exhaustive list of what Coke does:

In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.
20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get it’s hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)
40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dialate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.
45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.
>60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.
>60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.
>60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.

I’ll get a Coke bottle and start designing some labels.

Culture Jamming

Culture Jamming is a form of media activism that incorporates the use of advertising language and imagery to subvert the expected advertising messages. Culture Jamming incorporates political and cultural criticism with the conventions of advertising. American artist Barbara Kruger is one of the seminal culture jammers. As a graphic designer for magazines Kruger learnt the techniques of advertising and then began to create art work that critically analysed consumer culture, racisim, sexism and war using conventional advertising signs and symbols. Kruger’s work has been used as a template for jammers over the years, to see examples of Kruger’s work. Culture Jamming comes in many guises and accomodates a multitude of subcultural practices such as billboard alteration, media hoaxs, fake ads, fake newspapers and fake websites. Culture Jamming is also called ’semilogical guerilla warfare’. Culture Jamming has become a wide spread and popular form of media activism, it is eye catching, effective and is possible for anyone with a sense of humour and a spray can or computer.

Techniques of culture jamming include adbusting, performance art, graffiti, billboard alteration, flash mobs and hacktivism (such as cybersquatting and Google bombing).

“Media Burn,” a spectacle staged in 1975 by the performance art collective Ant Farm.
BUGAUP, an Australian group founded in 1979 and most active in the 1980s, which creatively defaced advertising billboards, especially those featuring cigarette and alcohol advertising. The group’s acronym which stands for Billboard-Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions, is also a pun — to “bugger up” is an Australian slang term meaning “to spoil/ruin”
Naomi Klein’s No Logo, whose section on culture jamming draws heavily on Mark Dery’s 1993 essay on culture jamming, highlights the work of Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, of Artfux and the Cicada Corps of Artists. An excerpt is in Brandweek magazine.
The Bubble Project, a street art project by Ji Lee which involves placing empty “speech bubbles” on posters and advertisements for passers by to write commentary in.
The Church of the SubGenius, a satirical religion.

A “Kill your TV” slogan with skull motif in downtown TorontoGorillaz’ “Reject False Icons” movement, encouraging the placement of stickers on pictures of “False Icons” like Ashlee Simpson and Usher. Supporters also use graffiti to spread the word.
Billboard modifications, done in the style of the original billboard, by groups (e.g., the Billboard Liberation Front) or individuals.
Modifying slogans to create political statements. For example “Just do it… or else!” was used as a modified slogan to comment on Nike’s sweat shop practices.
Google bombing, a widespread effort to purposely influence the automated association of specific keywords with results produced by internet search engines, especially Google.
The Who’s 1967 album The Who Sell Out, featuring satirical faux commercials on the cover and between the tracks.
The band Negativland’s Dispepsi album, in which recordings related in some way to soft drinks are used to comment (in a negative way) on the beverage industry and its marketing practices.
The Church of Satan’s ad featuring founder Anton Szandor LaVey holding a snake in the style of Apple Computer’s “Think Different” campaign.
The 1994 burning of £1,000,000 in cash by the K Foundation.
Sousveillance, the recording or monitoring of authority figures.
Whirl-Mart is an event that seeks to mimic and mock what they perceive as the absurdity of the shopping process, often by organising a crowd to walk around a Wal-Mart in an apparent daze for several hours, buying nothing.
The defacement of stolen (and then returned) library books by Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, for which they were imprisoned for six months in 1962. Written about in detail in John Lahr’s “Prick Up Your Ears.”

André the Giant as street artAndré the Giant Has a Posse, a street art campaign.
Kerry Against Bush a spoof political pressure group, based in Kerry, Ireland who urged voters to vote against GW Bush in the 2004 election. Their logo was a jam of a kerrygold butter logo. The website is archived here
Nike-Jam by 01.org
Stickering stop signs to create messages (e.g., “Stop War,” “Stop Eating Animals,” “Stop! Hammertime!,” etc.).
Operation Mindfuck- Outlined as various projects for Discordians to carry out which involve either defacement or sending absurd letters to people who have political power. Most notably Project Eagle which involves putting up fliers that read “Burn the polls, ye sons of freedom” on or around election day and Project Graffito (and Project Bumpersticker) which involve giving particularly Erisian slogans, such as “Your Local Police Are Armed and Dangerous”, widespread distribution.
500 Copies of the Paris Hilton’s debut album are remixed and retouched by Banksy and Danger Mouse.
Shopdropping (or Reverse Shoplifting) – The placement of art objects in public retail environments (especially large retail conglomerates).

NYCWriting messages on paper currency.
In Reno, Nevada, homemade stickers have appeared on vending machines, stating “The bill you slip/ into this slot/ supports my graft/ so thanks a lot!- Mayor Bob Cashell.”
www.NoArmy.com– a remixed version of the recruitment site, www.goarmy.com, which presents the facts missing in the Army sales pitch, and shows potential recruits what they can really expect if they enlist.

Hacktivism

Hacktivism has been recently defined by a newspaper article in the Guardian as “a highly politicised underground movement using direct action in cyberspace to attack globalisation and corporate domination of the internet”

Targets, mainly multinational corporations and political organizations, are hit with a range of electronic weapons, from viruses to email bombs, which crash websites by bombarding them with thousands of protest messages, said an article.

Privacy in the streets

The Surveillance Camera Players (SCP) is a small, informal group of people who are unconditionally opposed to the installation and use of video surveillance cameras in public places. The SCP was formed in New York City in November 1996 by two groups of friends/activists: one centered around Michael Carter, the author of the manifesto for “The Guerrilla Preprogramming of Video Surveillance Equipment” (1995), and the other around Bill Brown, fresh from the “Unabomber for President” campaign (1996). Both shared a strong interest in the theories and actions of the Situationist International, especially its use of “pranks” or detournement (diverting bland or oppressive materials for subversive purposes).

Super Vision

“A Cross-Media Performance
We are surrounded by subtle and unseen forms of surveillance of the data we create as we move through our daily lives, and at the same time our identities seem increasingly to be constituted of data. What is the relationship between who we are and the cloud of data which surrounds each one of us? In post-9/11 daily life, we have come to accept, allow, and even encourage this new post-visual form of surveillance and its constant incursions into the realm of our “selves.” What forces encourage our permissiveness and engagement in the process of collecting this data and making it public, and what will the results of it be?

SUPER VISION is a collaboration between the New York-based performance and media ensemble The Builders Association (www.thebuildersassociation.org), a company which exploits the richness of contemporary technologies to extend the boundaries of theater, and dbox (www.dbox.com), a multidisciplinary studio whose work explores the intersection of visual arts and architecture through 3D digital media.

SUPER VISION explores the changing nature of our relationship to living in a post-private society, where personal electronic information is constantly collected and distributed. The data files collected on us circulate like extra bodies, and these “data bodies” carry stains that are harder to clean than mud or sin; from birth certificates to bad credit, every moment of activity contributes to the construction of ones own data body. These bodies, separate from our physical bodies and infinitely more accessible, exist in a “data space” which, because it is inherently more complex than the visual, remains mostly invisible.

SUPER VISION makes that space visible. It will illustrate a multi-faceted, multi-layered narrative using the language and technologies of surveillance itself. The data in which every character is immersed both surrounds the story and serves as a “trail” through it.

SUPER VISION tells three stories drawn from the datasphere:
1. As he crosses successive borders, a solitary traveler gradually is forced to reveal all of his personal information, until his identity becomes transparent, with no part of his life left outside the bounds of dataveillance.
2. A young woman, addicted to the white noise of constant connection, maintains a long-distance relationship with her Grandmother. As she makes efforts to digitally archive her Grandmothers past, the grandmother slips into senility. The young woman is left to discover what remains of her Grandmothers life and her own outside the realm of data.
3. A father covertly exploits his young son’s personal data to meet the demands of the family’s lifestyle. This ploy escalates beyond the father’s control, until he is compelled to disappear. His wife and son are left with a starkly diminished data portrait, and his escape is shadowed by the long reach of the datasphere.

SUPER VISION combines cutting-edge digital animation, new video techniques, an architectural set, electronic music, and live performance. We will use computer animation not only to create an artificial ’space’ but also to overlay information and data onto the 3D world of the theater and create an immersive environment with which the performers will interact.

Please visit www.superv.org to view the SUPER VISION concept trailer and images.” - http://thebuildersassociation.org/flash/flash.html?homepage

Keylogging

I have come across Keylogging. Its a term that is used when the input of a persons keyboard is tracked and copied using an application. These are generally used in a malicious way which costs millions every year to unsuspecting victims on the internet.

“Track activities from all computer users: data typed, sites visited, applications launched etc. With this easy-to-use spy software you will learn more about your spouse, kids, colleagues, and employees activity. 123 KeyLogger is fully hidden from its users and logs everything that is typed or viewed through the computer in a protected file. 123 Keylogger is absolutely undetectable, which means that no button or icon can be seen in the task bar and no process title is present in the Task Manager list. This spy software is able to catch all keystrokes made on your computer, log the programs that are run and closed, capture screenshots, monitor clipboard content, view active windows, program execution, web pages opened and loaded and much more.” – http://www.sharewareconnection.com/123-keylogger.htm

The site scarily uses relaxed terminology when actually tracking your employees input is a breach of their privacy (unless they are fully aware obviously).

I have installed a keylogger onto my machine and will a demonstation of it at the presentation on wednesday. This will point out how easy and very scary it is from someone to fall into the trap.

The History of Privacy

“Privacy is a fundamental human right. It underpins human dignity and other values such as freedom of association and freedom of speech. It has become one of the most important human rights of the modern age.” – http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-559062

The earliest piece of law in England which related to privacy is in 1361, the Justices of the Peace Act provided for the arrest of peeping toms and eavesdroppers.

Of course privacy is recognised in the Qur’an and in the says of Mohammed, as to it is mentioned in The Bible.

More recently, it wasnt until around the 60’s and 70’s that the interest into the right of privacy had risen. With the surveillance poterntial of powerful computer systems prompted demands for specific rules governing the collection and handling of personal information.

The first data protection act was created in Germany, 1970.

Without listing endless amounts of details about out current Data Protextion Act(1998) here is a link which has it all – http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/Acts1998/ukpga_19980029_en_1

Online Predators

While researching for online privacy issues, I thought it would be a good idea to point out a few stories which I have come across. The following article is from a reporter trying to catch out pedophiles by posing as a 14 year old girl. I imagine that its on facebook as she “petted her virtual pet”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7171589.stm

Such a frightening thought and the way its done to lure users away from the privacy of that site. It seems like Instant Messengers like MSN have an important role in the mind of these predators. They seemingly know that its safer to use that type of content on there rather than through a website.

This is useful link if you feel that you are being victimized – http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/special_initiatives/wa_resources/wa_shared/backgrounders/online_predators.cfm

The direction of the project is looking at privacy and how users seemingly give endless amounts of information away just because its a secure and legitimate website, what you dont think of at the time is that your private information is easily accessed by anyone (unless you set up the right settings). But unless your computer literate most people generally dont know how to protect themselves, one way to think of it is would your mum or dad know what they were doing? Imagine how would a young teenager know what they were doing.

Sort it!

Phishing explained

Most people associate phishing with e-mail messages that spoof, or mimic, banks, credit card companies or other business like Amazon and eBay. These messages look authentic and attempt to get victims to reveal their personal information. But e-mail messages are only one small piece of a phishing scam.

From beginning to end, the process involves:

Planning. Phishers decide which business to target and determine how to get e-mail addresses for the customers of that business. They often use the same mass-mailing and address collection techniques as spammers.
Setup. Once they know which business to spoof and who their victims are, phishers create methods for delivering the message and collecting the data. Most often, this involves e-mail addresses and a web page.
Attack. This is the step people are most familiar with — the phisher sends a phony message that appears to be from a reputable source.
Collection. Phishers record the information victims enter into web pages or popup windows.
Identity Theft and Fraud. The phishers use the information they’ve gathered to make illegal purchases or otherwise commit fraud. As many as a fourth of the victims never fully recover .

“Phishing scams began in the mid-1990s not to obtain bank or credit card information, but to get free online access. In those days, ISPs like AOL charged by the minute. Phishers would try to obtain AOL members login user id and passwords by sending e-mails appearing to come from AOL’s member services department. The fake email would ask recipients to verify their user names and passwords. The scammers would then log on, using the victims’ accounts, and run up a bill.” - http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/phishing.php

I think it would be quite interesting to create an example of phishing for the final piece. Mimicing a website is very easy nowadays and using the users input I could hopefully save to a text file. Just like to point out that this is for know financial gain and will not be used maliciouslly it’s merely for a university project which is due in on wednesday.

Online Identity

Having an online identity is a social idenity in which online communities can recognise you, the content which you should choose to put is entirely up to you. Creating an online identity can give the user a different perpective on social networking sites. These identies can be used maliciously i.e. pedophiles to create make belief characters in which young children can talk to.

It is reported that there are countless underage users on facebook who dont actually meet the criteria of being over the age of 14. So as soon as they start communicating there are immediately breaking facebooks privacy policy.

“Facebook began life as a way of keeping US college students in touch with each other. Devised by Harvard drop-out Mark Zuckerberg, the site now accounts for 1% of all net traffic and is the sixth most visited site in the US

The social networking site is thought to have about 39 million members. Numbers have jumped since the firm removed the need to have an academic e-mail address in September 2006.” - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6980454.stm

From this something so harmless has been built into everyday life. Facebook ha now come to the point where they want to discreetly create revenue without annoying the users for example when someone list their favourite movie as Spiderman they could get a video trailer sent to them for X-Men.

So it would seem that facebook want to give their advertisers more opportunities to target individuals according to their interests, this inevitably conflicting with the users privacy.

When obtaining private data from a user this can be known as phishing. The first documented use of the word “phishing” took place in 1996. Most people believe it originated as an alternative spelling of “fishing,” as in “to fish for information.”

Tracking

I have been looking at current ways to track online activity, one of the main sources that kept craopping up was Trakzor, its a myspace/facebook profile tracker. Facebook have a strict privacy policy which has been very tight so far as there are no current trackers which can be implented into facebook apps.

There are different methods in how to track online use, for my IDAT204 organism project with Chris Speed we looked at traffic coming intot eh pc and displaying it through a visual program (Processing).

I came across an IE css tip, developed by Jeremiah Grossman on fire fox but then developed again on IE by Christian Heilmann

Taking a few steps futher i decided to look at RSS feeds, they mainly stream live news feeds to a specific site.
Here is my attempt to get some news from CNN.com:

I am now curious as to know if I can use this on a social privacy level. Facebook mention an app called Bloglines, so they already acknowledge it as a legitimate piece of coding.

More to follow…

From my presentation…

During my presetnation with joasia I pointed out the issue of privacy. Today in the news, Google have been sued over their Street View project.

“Google is getting sued over Street View pics in the States by a Pennsylvania couple saying that images of their home that appear Street View “violated their privacy, devalued their property, and caused them mental suffering”.

Mr and Mrs Boring (really) say the images of their home on the Google site had to be taken from their long driveway, labelled “Private Road” and that violated their privacy.

In response, Google, who have faced criticism over privacy issues with Street View in the past, says there is a way to request images are removed from the system, and that if the Borings had made this request, the website would have complied.

“There’s no merit to this action”, a Google spokesperson said. “It is unfortunate litigation was chosen to address the concern because we have visible tools, such as a YouTube video, to help people learn about imagery removal and an easy-to-use process to facilitate image removal.”

The Boring’s lawyer has said that removing the image doesn’t undo the damage caused.” – www.sky.com/news (9/4/8)

With the deadline due so soon it is becoming clear on how privacy really is a massive issue online. I have to tread carefully.

Final E-Learning Game…

Here is our final game, this is what we’ve handed in!

Testing part two…

Having been into school on Tuesday and watched how the children used the game and asking them what they thought they’d like to see on the game, we’ve been away and updated the game

What changes have we made?

Sound -

We’ve added the sound component, which we said we would from the start. The voice we used isn’t brilliant it’s a bit robotic but we felt it was ok and clear enough for the children to understand. Which proved to be a good move as they all seemed to hear what she was saying and responded by doing what they’d just heard.

Rollovers -

As some of the children didn’t grasp the concept of some of the symbols used on the screen, such as the next arrow. We’ve added rollover texts which show the word. For example when rolling over the play triangle the word ‘play’ will appear.

Watch -

We slowed down the drawing of the shapes movie clip, as it started a bit too soon and the children were so busy looking around the screen they missed it. So now the instruction is read out, the movie starts drawing, and they can have a go.

Animation -

We’ve made it a bit more interesting, so the children have something fun to look at once they’ve finished. It shows them how they can use the shapes they’ve just been practicing to draw something fun.

After playing the game, one of the children came back out to us and handed us a piece of paper, with a massive grin on their face. This is what was on the piece of paper:

We’re were pretty impressed t say the least, one of the children had understood the point of the game, and was able to draw the shapes by themselves on paper having played our game. We obviously aren’t taking credit for that. The children at this stage in the year have already had a lot of time to learn their shapes. But it shows this child managed to understand the instructions at the very least and felt they could draw the same four shapes for us.

Prototyping with the children…

This afternoon, we went into School to test our prototype with some of the children in the reception class. Mrs Cload gave us four children, who she thought encompassed the range of computer abilities in the class to help us see how they reacted to the game.

We had one child deemed less able, one more able and two average children. Also to make sure we had a fair view of abilities Vanessa made sure we had two girls and two boys.

We had the children come out individually, Simon explained how to play the game, Suzanne made notes on how the children reacted
to the game and used it. As well as how they got on with the laptop touch pad or the graphics tablet.

To keep the children’s identity’s safe (it’s not really important who they are) we’ll refer to them by letters.

A

Wasn’t keen on using the pen to begin with. Read the instructions relatively easily. Got on better with the touch pad, but ultimately when given the choice A seemed to prefer using the pen once they’d had chance to practice a bit.

G

Instructions were beyond reading ability; they instead had to be verbally explained to G. Blue arrow on the intro screen made no sense to G, could grasp the idea. Not confident in using the mouse at all, G found it very difficult to coordinate his movement and the mouse’s. Not keen on using the pen either. Struggled almost the whole way through the game.At the end of playing he game we asked; how do you think we could improve the game? G answered; sounds (didn’t specify what type).

J

May need to add a start button to the intro screen. J went straight for the try in screen rather than work their way along the screens, perhaps because they didn’t understand the instructions? Maybe numbering the screens would be useful, the children can all count 1,2,3 easily. Not sure about the play and pause buttons, didn’t really want to click and find out what they did, even with a bit of coaxing. After the first screen, J seemed to recognise what the next arrow did.

M

Instructions may be a problem? Blue arrow on intro screen not intuitive as a next button. A clear function might be an idea; M didn’t like to go ‘wrong’ Got used to using the graphics tablet and pen really quickly. Maybe instead of the symbols use words, or add additional info to the buttons? Preferred using the pen in the end more so tan the touch pad.At the end of playing the game we asked; did you read the instructions on any of the screens? M’s answer; no.

We also made some additional observations and had a few more thoughts about what we could do to make the game better including:

Slow the watch video down, the children seemed to miss the video, and then didn’t really cotton on to the play and pause button which would allow them to re watch as many times as necessary

Prototyping Stage…

Having spent the last few days getting to a stage where we can prototype our game, we’ve arranged to go into Boringdon tomorrow and get the children to test the game, in it’s current state.

At the moment the game consists of 6 screens:

screen 1 – contains instructions
screen 2 – circle
screen 3 – rectangle
screen 4 – square
screen 5 – triangle
screen 6 – animation at the end of the game

Eventually the shape pages will be random (we’ve already sorted that) but for the purpose of prototyping we wanted to see how the children work through the screens and how they react to the game.

At present we don’t have any audio cues, for two reasons, firstly we havent had a chance to record any, and secondly we want to see how important they are to the children. We hope that the game is easily understood and navigated, without the need for additional instruction. We do intend to add audio cues, this will just act as a test for us to see the importance of them.

We have a quick animation at the moment at the end of the game, but this will be adapted and made more interesting.

Here’s the game we’re taking in to school for prototyping:

Click To Play