Just For A Moment
“Just for a moment” is an interactive light installation design project in MAP Mima, Macquarie. It aims to arouse the enthusiasm and positive feelings of people in Lake Macquarie City. Through scanning a QR code users will be able to approach this interactive artwork via their mobile device. Users can set the catenary light styles in the mobile interface by selecting different pattern balls. The light installation will generate basic patterns that coordinate users’ personalized selection. For richer, more complex, and vivid light effects, users need to play the ball game in the mobile interface - gain corresponding scores to see enhanced lighting effects.
It is a design that encourages users to create; it is a project that grows residents' sense of community identity and encourages them to transform their emotions from negative to positive; and it is a interactive artwork to improve the playfulness in the Speers Point Park.
A video guide to this project
System Architecture
MQTTHQ Broker
Publish
A web interface created using p5.js JavaScript library
Publish
Subscribe
Receive the message from the web, then, publish the message to Processing to change the light effects.
Catenary light effects are created using Processing. Users operating on the webpage will make different light effects on catenary light installation.
Mobile Interface
Through scanning a QR code, users will be able to approach this interactive artwork via their mobile device. When users click the ‘join’ button, the water drop will fall into the ocean. The depth of the ocean will increase. We provide an introduction page before the game starts. For richer, complex, and vivid lighting effects, users can enter the pinball game on the game page. If the ball’s color matches the pole’s color, users can get more beautiful and complex lights shown on the catenary lights, thereby creating a beautiful memory for people there.
Home Page
Game Guide Page
Game Page-01
Game Page-02
Catenary Light Effects
The city of Lake Macquarie is closely related to water, and water carries the daily lives and outdoor activities of the residents of Lake Macquarie City. Also, water is a metaphor for peace and calm, visitors can enjoy a moment of relaxation and peace by listening to the sound of water. Four basic light effects(blink, ripple, wave, &collision) will run periodically when no user plays the web game, then, when users enter the web game and changed the total score of the game, the light will become richer and more beautiful by users' effort.
Basic
Blink Effect
Basic
Ripple Effect
Basic
Wave Effect
Basic
Collision Effect
Upgraded
Blink Effect
Upgraded
Ripple Effect
Upgraded
Wave Effect
Upgraded
Collision Effect
DESIGN PROCESS
Step 1 Field Research
Observation: We conducted field research in Multi-Arts Pavilion mima and Speers Point Park to understand our potential users by observing what they do and what their experience and feelings are in the community. After looking into the observation result, we may be able to identify potential user needs and thus gain tremendous design opportunities.
Observe people's activities there
Interview: To better understand the target design location and public’s idea there , we also use Interview method to collect useful information for our project in this field research. Based on the information provided by front desk staff: normally they have 10 kids and 90 adults visitors visiting the Cube in an opening day; if there are children’s events, the ratio of children to adults is about 1:3. About 500-800 audiences enter the cube within a month.
Step 2 User Persona
Step 3 Concept & Interface Iteration
Initial Concept
Drag & Fire was inspired by the classic Windows game, 3D Pinball Space Cadet. We wanted to build a game interface where the ball bounces around the boundaries of the screen and eventually comes to a stop. The balls stop at different light poles to score points. The higher the total score, the more beautiful and richer the strip of light effect will be.
Initial mobile interface
Initial light effects
1st Iteration
To produce progressive lighting changes corresponding to every interaction made by users, we have divided the lighting effects into eight effects, as shown below. When no one is interacting, the light strip loops a default light effect. When the user plays, and the ball that pops up in the game interface on the mobile ends up in any of the lamp post areas, the user can choose to transfer a new light effect to the catenary light.
1st iteration mobile interface
1st iteration light effects
1st Iteration
Reflection
2nd Iteration
We used p5.js to create an interactive interface for the mobile web, and divided the interface into four different coloured triangular areas, when the ball falls in different areas, the catenary light will show the corresponding four effects. The next day we came up with the idea of a 'join' page, where we wanted to keep track of how many people had participated in the game. We recorded each participant as a drop, and when we clicked on 'Join', a drop would fall. The overall number of drops determines the height of Lake Macquarie at the lower end of the interface.
2nd iteration mobile interface(using p5.js)
2nd iteration mobile interface coding script
2nd iteration welcome page upgrade concept
2nd Iteration
Reflection
3rd Iteration
Through peer review and tutor's feedback, in this iteration, we recreated the Welcome Page using mainly p5.js and added a 'Game Guide Page' to help users quickly understand the rules of the game. We have also changed the four areas of the game interface from triangles to circles to make the interface look more beautiful.
For the catenary light design, we created four dynamic effects（using Processing) based on the four forms of water and found some colour schemes on the internet that we felt were suitable.
01
Welcome Page
3rd iteration mobile interface
03
Game Screen01
3rd iteration mobile interface
02
Guide Page
3rd iteration mobile interface
04
Game Screen02
3rd iteration mobile interface
3rd iteration light effect
3rd iteration light effect
Ripple Effect
Cllision Effect
Blink Effect
Wave Effect
3rd iteration light effect
3rd iteration light effect
3rd Iteration
Reflection
4th Iteration
The fourth iteration was largely based on some of the issues identified by our group members after their experience. We have made some detailed adjustments to some of the interactive elements of the mobile handset and have reorganized the overall interaction process. We delete the game page 1, and focous more on how to combine 2 pages into one. And we completed the basic and enhanced versions of the four effects for lighting, which received good feedback from tutors and peers.
4th iteration mobile interface
Basic
Ripple Effect
Basic
Wave Effect
Basic
Collision Effect
Upgraded
Ripple Effect
Upgraded
Wave Effect
Upgraded
Collision Effect
Basic
Blink Effect
Upgraded
Blink Effect
4th iteration light effects 3D prototype
4 parts that need improvement
4th Iteration
Reflection
self-evaluation
1. The interaction ways are still not very interesting. Users don’t have many choices to play. All they can do is to choose between different patterns, to shoot the ball to determine the speed of the ball and lights, and to see the scores automatically increase to determine which enhanced lighting effects will be displayed.
2. The feedback provided by the system is not adequate. According to Don Norman’s principles, feedback provides information to users so they can understand the result of an action (Norman, 2013). Currently, users don’t know if they choose pattern balls successfully as these balls always remain the same color and shape.
3. When the ball is moving and bouncing randomly on the screen, users don’t have many controls (both on the mobile interface and the catenary lights). It leads to frustrations.
4. Currently, the score system doesn’t provide adequate explanations about how it works.
5th Iteration
This iteration focuses on improving the 4 issues mentioned in the last reflection. The main interface that has been improved is the game interface on mobile. Now every time the user selects a colour ball at the top of the interface, a small ball of the corresponding colour will be displayed at the bottom of the interface, giving the user a visible feedback. After that, we did a Think-Aloud user experience testing with the help of 5 volunteers. Thanks to their help of them, we identified some issues that could be perfect in the future.
previous version
improved version
5th Iteration
Reflection
Think-Aloud feedback
Based on the think-aloud and user testing results, we summarize following feedback and refinements
Final Works
Mobile Interface
Through scanning a QR code, users will be able to approach this interactive artwork via their mobile device. When users click the ‘join’ button, the water drop will fall into the ocean. The depth of the ocean will increase. We provide an introduction page before the game starts. For richer, complex, and vivid lighting effects, users can enter the pinball game on the game page. If the ball’s color matches the pole’s color, users can get more beautiful and complex lights shown on the catenary lights, thereby creating a beautiful memory for people there.
Home Page
Game Guide Page
Game Page-01
Game Page-02
Catenary Light Effects
The city of Lake Macquarie is closely related to water, and water carries the daily lives and outdoor activities of the residents of Lake Macquarie City. Also, water is a metaphor for peace and calm, visitors can enjoy a moment of relaxation and peace by listening to the sound of water. Four basic light effects(blink, ripple, wave, &collision) will run periodically when no user plays the web game, then, when users enter the web game and changed the total score of the game, the light will become richer and more beautiful by users' effort.
Basic
Blink Effect
Basic
Ripple Effect
Basic
Wave Effect
Basic
Collision Effect
Upgraded
Blink Effect
Upgraded
Ripple Effect
Upgraded
Wave Effect
Upgraded
Collision Effect
Concept justification - What makes a great place?
We evaluate our concept based on the Place Diagram developed by the Project for Public Spaces (Project for Public Spaces, n.d.).
To make a great place, there are four qualities:
1) the space is accessible
2) people are immersed in activities there
3) the space is comfortable
4) it is a sociable space
Comfort & Image
Lake Macquarie is Australia’s largest coastal salt water lake. Most of the residents of the City of Lake Macquarie live near the shores of the lake (“Lake Macquarie (New South Wales),” 2022). Water covers many activities of people living nearby.
Therefore, we use water as the primary design metaphor: all movement patterns are closely relevant to the rhythm and movement of water. We used four seasons as the color scheme to develop four basic and four enhanced wave, ripple, blink, and collision effects. The differences between these patterns are noticeable, which may increase potential users. We hope this will leave a good impression on visitors around there and create a good image for this place.
However, some colors of patterns are a little dark, it’s not sure if all patterns are very visible at night.
Uses & Activities
People’s main activities in the Speers Point Park are socialization and relaxing exercise. Therefore, one main purpose of our design is to provide users more playful and relaxing experiences.
To achieve this, we combine the ball game to design the catenary lights. 1) users can long press to shoot the ball which can determine how fast the movement of lights will be; 2) use point system and progress bar to provide rewards to users; 3) map different moods to different buff effects, etc. All these gamification elements may potentially increase users’ memorable experience.
However, due to the time limit and technical problems, the interaction in our concept may not seem strong. In the future iteration, we intend to develop more interesting features such as changing the direction, position, colors, etc., instead of just speed and pattern selection.
Sociability
The Speers Point Park is a sociable place. We realize this point so we try to continue to increase the social interaction in our concept - we design the ‘progress bar’ feature. Multiple users can use the system at the same time, and the score in the progress bar will automatically increase based on everyone’s effort. This enables them to share the experience by obtaining the score and rewards together, and co-create the enhanced beautiful visual output (i.e., movement patterns). We also have ‘water drop’ cover page to imply the relationship between big community and small individual through simple interaction.
However, in our current ‘sender’ interface, we haven’t achieved the ‘automatic update of values’ feature. Also, when multiple users play, the movement patterns will be changed frequently which may lead to some chaotic situations.