Planning

We began by brainstorming ideas as a group, we took the initial idea of bringing people together as our groups favourite of all our early concepts and began to work on it.  Slowly over time we developed a concept; based on a mobile web app, available to be expanded across all mobile smartphone platforms, but being focused on the iPhone throughout early development.  The idea behind this web app was of course to bring people together, however we developed that broad idea further, and narrowed it down to a particular format. Using that idea that board games bring people, especially families together in that strange awkward, forced and sometimes false situation, the situation usually early evenings, weekends, times in which the family unit feels it needs to reconnect together. We decided to take this concept and apply it to another part of peoples lives; specifically the situation of a family unit shopping. Obviously this is not applicable to all families, requiring smart phones for all users, however, this was just a starting point, to help us further expand our ideas.  We wanted to create an app, which in essence is functional, however it is deeper than that, it is a platform on which people can have fun, without being 'babied' by the application, hardware, or software.  The idea behind this app, was simply just to bring everyone, be it family of a group of friends who, when out shopping are separated into a single location, to unite the group together.  We decided to use a geo-location based functionality, but take that further, due to the fact that geo-loaction is not accurate to an extremely close radius, this would be used to bring people closer and closer, and then another functionality would be brought in using 'blip's sending a sound to the other persons mobile device, to aid in getting people even closer together if unable to find. This app, which begins as a functional 'friend-finder' can easily be seen as a game too, in which hide and seek, could be played on a city wide, and even greater scale.

One of the hardest things when designing anything is to come up with a name. Which we decided on incredibly early, we narrowed down our many name ideas to Rendezvous and Beacon. These names like the others we talked about, embody some of the concept for the app within the name, they are simple and short, easy to remember and catchy. Eventually deciding on Beacon, we started to develop this project from an initial talked about idea to an actual concept.

Our first plan drawn out, a brainstorm developing as it was written.  Not only did we take our idea and refine it making it better and more coherent, but we made it more realistic and a goal, reachable, by looking at technical limitations, and taking on board time and budget.  This is our simple story board for our first concept, bringing everyone in the groups ideas, thoughts and suggestions together into this concept.

Initial Ideas

When we first found out what the brief was we had a couple of ideas what we could create and which board game we could focus on:

• An idea that we thought of was to go for a simplistic classic game design, such as those seen in video games such as pac man and space invaders. These games are classics and where the original idea of 'gaming' first started from so we thought we would be able to use this style to make some really original and something that would stand out. Most games these days use high definition, technical images such as those seen in games like COD and grand theft auto, but we wanted to look at where these games came from and how we could incorporate something into our design and final piece. 

• Staying on a similar theme as simplicity and classic gaming we thought of the idea of going back to basics and what the original concept of a board game is. The inital idea of a board game is to bring the family together into one area and to interact with each other and we thought of using this as the theme for our installation. We could create something thats initial use is to bring the family together and from here we can expand our ideas to incorporate a specific game. 

• We thought about what games we could incorporate into the idea of bringing people together. Our idea was to start out with the players away from each other, and simply just bring them together. We decided that whatever we created would be an iPhone application and a web application with the idea that we would later be able to expand it to android phones and blackberry. Games we thought of that use this similar concept:

• Battleships: The idea of battleships is to find the ships on the other peoples radar. We could create a similar idea, with a game that plots people on your phone on a radar and the user has to find their friends within a certain area.  
• Hide and Seek: Players simply have to use their mobile phones as a hide and seek device that allows players to login in a game together, with one player finding all the others in a certain area.
• Guess Who: We thought of having multiple dynamics and uses of our game, another we could include is a similar concept to guess who, rather thang guessing who is hiding, you have to guess where they are hiding with random clues sent to the phone from the person hiding, such as photos, messages, tweets etc.
• Pictionary: Developing again on the idea of using pictures to give ideas as to where the person is hiding we could include a similar concept to pictionary where the seeker is not given the entire photo as a clue but instead given random sections that they then have to guess from. This adds another concept to the game and makes it slightly more challenging.

Looking at the real use of board games which generally seems to be a way to bring the family together into one area and to interact with each other, even if this may be unwanted or awkward, the general use is that of bringing people together, and trying to have a good time.  We brought this concept into the theme for our installation, defining the 'board game' genre in this way, means that rather than take a single board game like say Monopoly, and enlarging it to a city scale, which could be just as awkward and uninteresting for those using it, we could create something thats initial use is simply just to bring family or friends together and from here we can expand our concept, rather than aiming to to be a just a game which can be played, but starting with a functional piece simply aiming to help bring people together, which acts as a catalyst; a platform in which people can expand the base function into a game.

Brief Breakdown

We were given the task to:

'use any specific board game as inspiration to create a novel interactive experience.'

The brief is certainly not very detailed so it is up to us to interpret it however we wish, this gives us a good opportunity to expand and explore different ideas. From the information we have been given about what it is that we need to create we can draw up the following breakdown and requirements: 

Breakdown:

Requirements: 

• The final product must be loosely based on a board game, and it should be clear how the board game has been incorporated into the experience. However the final product should not be an exact replica of the board game we choose, we need to expand the original concept. 

• The interactive experience could be a number of different options but must provide an enjoyable experience for the user so that they keep wanting to use it. 

• The final idea decided on must take the project to the next level to ensure that the idea is unique and uses the best of our skills and resources so that we can create something new and individual.

• The location of the final experience is not detailed and is open for us to decide upon, considering the small time scale we have to complete the project, using a space close by to the university such as Drake Circus ensures that we have complete access to the area whenever we need it.  

Technical and Resource Limitations:

• The only software we have available to us is anything we can find free on the internet. This may mean that we can only use limited programs that may not allow us to create something thats as detailed and technical as we originally wanted.

• We have a number of resources available to us from the University Media Hub, however we can only use the resources for a limited period of time so using equipment we already have ourselves such as our iPhones would make the project a lot easier.

Environmental Limitations:

• We don't really have any environmental limiatations at this point as we have not yet decided on our final idea. In the brief the location is not specifically defined so it is up to us to decide what we want to do and where we want to put it. There may be limitations of the environment we could use in terms of time scale, as we do not have much time to create this project we can only use a location that is close to the university so that we can easily test our installation.

• Depending on the technology we use and what we want to create the environment could have effects on our technology if we want to put something outside, the weather could definitely cause problems with the technology. We would have to make sure all our technology was waterproof and secure.

Contextual Limitations:

• Complexity of the application or installation, we have a very limited time scale for this project so we cannot create something too complicated because we do not have the time to make it.

• Our application or installation can only use a limited amount of equipment as we do not have a lot available to us. 

This project should be quite a fun project as we actually get to make the application or installation that we design so we can see the final outcome of our work and practically see what works and what does not. Hopefully we will be able to gain some practical skills with a wider range or technology and gain some experience in making and producing an installation. As a group we feel quite confident about this project. We have already talked about a couple of ideas and we have shared and expanded on some of these. Our groups works quite well together so hopefully we will be able to create something that takes the brief to the next level and expands our skills.