Course: Information Design Studio I: How to Make a Computer. And Why.

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Project Objective: Build a prototype of a device that can communicate with another device to ultimately serve a common goal of our group.

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Group Size: 3 Members

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Our group’s goal was to help fellow Bachelor of Information students build relationships through gameplay. Rather than creating a game that was fully online, we wanted to create a game using physical devices that were wirelessly connected and would allow players to interact remotely. This goal led us to building the Memory Game Box, a pattern recognition game that students could play together even if they were not in the same classroom. While our vision was to have two devices communicate color patterns back and forth, time and resource constraints limited our build to having one device that communicates with a phone app via Bluetooth. Please see the captioned images below for a full walk-through of our project.

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Electronics Used: Adafruit Feather M0, which communicates with the Bluefruit app on a phone via Bluetooth.

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My Role: 

• Leading the physical prototype build

• Assisting with code debugging

• Creating a persona to be used for presenting the project

• Completing several sections of regular design reports

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Lessons Learned:

• It's better not to be extremely detail-oriented when creating an initial prototype. This will make it easier to scrap the first prototype in exchange for a better design.

• It's important to carefully consider the size of technology components that must fit inside of a prototype, and pay close attention to the component layout.

• Rather than trying to approach a coding project by going straight to coding, one should first create a flowchart to gain a clear understanding of how functionality will need to be implemented.