Week 2: Coming Up with a Project Design

At the start of this term, there were numerous ideas floating around for different toy designs, but nothing concrete. The ideas considered included engineering toys marketed towards girls; helicopter battle sets; a remote-controlled basketball hoop; a gyroscope controlled by human motion; and music games that required players to mimic pitch and rhythm. For these assorted concepts, discussion occurred further to determine what would be practical to design and enjoyable for children to use. The design choice selected to propose first was the remote-controlled basketball hoop, with an aesthetic style of jungle wildlife to entertain the demographic of children ages 5-7.

Unfortunately, this proposal was not accepted. After numerous hours of sketching out different designs and suggesting and rejecting ideas both concrete and abstract, a new idea came into consideration: an arcade-style, interactive obstacle course.

From a prototype perspective, the design consists of an upright box with alternating ramps at varying height levels. The player controls a character which moves at a constant speed up the ramps; two buttons offer the player the ability to make the character jump and stop its motion up the ramps. These two controls are the only tools the player has to avoid the obstacles: small metal balls which roll down the ramp system at random intervals towards the character. The game is won when the character reaches the highest ramp without colliding with any of the obstacles.

To propose the idea, more work needed to be done: it was an interesting prototype, but it lacked character. An aesthetic design was needed. Those considered included a jungle theme, an industrial theme, an antique theme, and, finally, a pirate theme. The latter was immediately selected as the best choice. The obstacles became cannonballs launched down the swaying deck of a ship, dodged by a swaggering captain gamely attempting to get to his treasure; the box lost its prototype look and became a chest, and the project became Pirate Arrrcade.