Interaction Engineering Student Projects
Wicked Nature
Gianfranco Tesoro Charlotte Großmann
With Wicked Nature we wanted to explore the possibilities and usability for using a silicon stick as a gesture controller. We created a 1vs1 game that uses the stick gestures as input. In the game, each player has to destroy the buildings on their respective islands by creating natural disasters. They can create tornadoes, tsunamis, meteorite impacts and lightning strikes through different gestures with the silicon stick. The tornado is created by swirling the stick around. By rolling the stick between one's palms a tsunami is created. A meteorite impact occurs by bending the stick into a circle and holding it still and a lightning bolt appears by stretching the stick and releasing it.
We worked with processing and color recognition to detect the gestures.
We also performed user tests with 9 participants, where we compared the stick controller with an alternative input method. For the alternative input method, we used different colored objects in order to call the natural disasters. The objects just had to be placed at the position where the disaster should occur. The result of the tests was that the participants enjoyed the silicon controller more, but wanted more accuracy in the gesture detection.
Keywords
Tangible interaction Colaborative game