One Input Final Idea

My initial idea for this project was to create a type of box structure that utilized the sonar sensor as my input. I wanted to create a user driven experience where they interacted with an object of some kind, specifically a ball, and depending on where it landed in front of the sensor, a different experience occurred.

This idea went through a few iterations. Initially, it started as a box with multiple slots that the user could chose which to drop the balls into. This, I decided, was somewhat limiting and not as engaging as the idea could be.



The second development on this idea was to add an element of randomness. I wanted to make the user chose a place to drop the ball, but not know exactly where it would end up. This idea utilized pegs in a kind of "Plinko" situation that would result in the user having less control.



The next iteration which led to my final idea was to have only one slot to drop the ball in; however, the slot was moveable by the user. This allowed more interaction on the users part as well as a larger variety of outcomes for the sensor to receive input from. While before, the sensor would have been limited to say, 6-8 different distance reads, with the user being able to drop the ball in a much broader range of places, the reads can now be extremely small gaps of distance. Additionally, the added element of movement is much more engaging for the user experience, and creates an incentive to continue playing as there is no way of knowing the limits to the sensor reads and how many different outcomes there can be.








My concept for sound output also went through a few drafts. My first thought was that a scale of notes would be the most obvious output of sound as physically the device is moving in a type of scale. My next idea was that instead of notes or melodies, the output could be sounds of chaos: alarms, sirens, etc. This was met with the problem of not having purpose behind these sounds other than to avoid music itself so I away from it.

My final idea for sound is to have each output be a note; however, they will not be in an order from highest to lowest, or in any order for that matter. The notes will be random, to create even more of an incentive to continue playing with the device, to find a particular sound if the user is looking for one, or to just figure out through interacting, how many notes there really are. Additionally, there will be a sort of "easter egg" implement where if the sensor triggers the same distance measure twice within a small period of time (say within half a second of the initial read) the note will begin to loop and will not stop until that exact distance is triggered again. This creates the potential for singular notes to become beats that hold rhythm and melody and entices the user to experiment with the two different types of balls that will be provided for dropping: ones that bounce, and ones that do not. By adding this element of looping, the user can begin to layer and combine notes and beats to create their own new sounds.