Design – Sound and Vision

By aniekbreevoort June 24th, 2016

The project has come to an end…

This is our last blogpost. Our project has come to an end unfortunately. For those who where at our end presentations, thank you for coming!

Here’s a description of our final prototype, DataVrij:

DataVrij is a turn based board game that helps Dutch families explore the social en technical implications, of personal data as a currency in online environments, on their daily lives.The setting is a board game with a dice (turn based) where the families can come onto different tiles where they get asked for their personal data, or they get a reward instantly (like a secret passage). The genre of the game is digital board game. What sets this project apart, are the three different benefits the families get from playing DataVrij:

– The game helps them becoming aware of how often they get asked for their personal data and how often families give this information away (for incentives).

– The game creates an educational moment for parents, which they can use for instructing their children on how to be safe (in the parents own opinion) on the Internet when it comes to their personal data.

– The game will help family members form their own opinions on the matter and it will help them to start thinking about this subject in their daily lives.

See the attachments for the logo and the board of the game. We also have a video, you can find it at the following link:

Final video DataVrij

We also uploaded all our pictures on Flickr: Flickr Album

Thank you all for your attention, help and encouragement!

We would like to thank The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and our coach Bernadette Schrandt.

By aniekbreevoort June 17th, 2016

Sprint 5

For this sprint our main goal was to fine-tune our game mechanics, elements, rules, and it’s ways of interaction by testing, in order to make the game tangible and close to a phase where it can be implemented in the Sound and Vision space. We have, then, tested two forms of interaction in the game on users, one where we have interactive devices and another one with an interactive table, so to realise which form works best for users and which form still creates a conversation.
Another value was the form of the game, rectangular or circular , while searching for the right one we also tested with visitors, employees and colleague’s , coming to the result that circular works and appeals the best. Furthermore, we investigate on the game different sizes for the testers and the right duration for the gameplay.

A first idea was to test how the storyline with houses from famous Dutch tv shows appeals to our testers, so we continued testing with footage and pictures, created a ranking and choose the right houses to put in the game. After meetings with Sound and Vision and MediaLAB colleagues, we changed our strategy for the board to the old-fashioned Dutch Geese board game

New Form

Old form

New form of the game after testing, compared to the old form

Then, we managed to create a customer journey map of our customers journey through our game, so to grasp the added value and meaning of our game to users, so there would be still a dilemma at the end to create a conversation by either incentive or highscore board.

The game recipe/customer journey

Thinking the aesthetics of our game, we thought of testing with multi touch table and the devices, also made some rough scheches of the ideal space and how we would like our installation to be presented.

Preliminary sketces of the ideal space for the game

Concluding, we continue working on presenting a playable alpha/beta version at final presentations plus note test results from this in manual!

By aniekbreevoort May 20th, 2016

Sprint 4

For sprint 4, our main goal was to create a game design document as a framework for our end prototype, different prototypes with different kinds of interaction and test various specific elements.
We were also looking to define the story of our game, what is the dilemma at the end of it and ways of making it more interesting. For that reason we made a broad board game research and also created multiple prototypes that have different forms of interaction or implementation , so we would be able to reflect on them and suggest different choices to Sound and Vision.

Game Design Document
In order to create a Game Design Document and get more insights, we have invited and talked to various game experts and media Lab designers to understand and create manuals for collaborative and competitive games.

After we have tested how users rate different kinds personal data order to have this information ready to implement in our end prototype. We then created a different board game scenario and proceeded with testing.
We tried to play the game with projection mapping, but this did not work out since the map was to small and we did not have the right resources.

Paper prototype

Later on, we tested on visitors , with the game mechanics of our paper prototype , a monopoly-like board game, investigating on what board strategy should we use, how do users like to interact and how they give/enter their personal data?

For the next sprint we will try to better define our gameplay and we will start building the game digitally.

By aniekbreevoort April 19th, 2016

Sprint 3

For this sprint we wanted to do user tests in order to advise Sound and Vision and ourselves on how to move further in the next sprints. For this reason, we have decided to test two of our visualized concepts on users in order to narrow them down to one idea that we can suggest this to Sound and Vision for further development.

We have created two tested scenarios for these concepts Hide and Seek and Data Zap.

Hide and Seek

Checking if the software is working.

After inviting the visitors to come and test, and introducing the game as a possible installation we let them play/experiment. The purpose of this testing was for the participants to create a camouflage for facial recognition software with several materials, like face paint, fake hair and post-its to draw on and use as coverage. Once the participant thought that the camera will not be able to recognise him/her, we would make a snapchat picture to confirm whether their face is recognise or not.

Manolis checking if the software for Hide and Seek is working.

DataZap

The board for Data Zap

For this concept, we invited visitors to play a Monopoly based board game. The objective was to buy as much houses as possible,the player with the most houses would be the winner.Each player then would get 10 personal data cards and would role the dice. A MediaLAB employee would be the banker. The player could buy the house of interest with an exhange of their personal data, the higher the price of the house, the more personal the data became. When the game came to an end and there was a winner, they would be presented with a card of the ,supposidly, previous winner of the game and all his personal data in order to give them a choice.Would they choose to retrieve the price we have prepared for them with an exchange to make a profile of all their personal data as the example of the previous winner,or not?