Charmaine Lee

During our trip to the Melbourne Museum, everything we came across that could be considered as interactive all had to do with pressing buttons and answering quizzes. By the end of the trip, I had a few ideas – using videos to evoke different emotions, asking people to complete a maze ranging from easy to difficult as you progressed, an interactive dream where the viewer gets to create a scene as ridiculous as they like, doing a colour-test and doing jigsaws. Eventually, I went with the latter two ideas for the solo and group work, because it felt as though they offered more creative control within the short time frame we had.

The inspiration for the colour test came from the Melbourne Museum and two exhibitions they were showing: one showcasing synaesthesia (a condition wherein senses overlap, for example some people with synaesthesia might say that the colour purple smell like roses) and the exhibitions that required us to answer trivia questions by pressing buttons. It reminded me of colour-blind tests that I used to do in high-school and everyone trying to beat one another by trying to answer faster, and I thought that could be something I could recreate by testing a human’s most trusted and most used sense: their eyes.

The project itself wasn’t too hard – once I was shown how to do one aspect of it, the rest was easy because it was so repetitive. What took a long time was actually searching for images I could use for my colour-blind tests and making sure there was enough variety of them to keep it interesting. However, I also had to make sure the images were consistent, so that they weren’t differently styled and inconsistent (while not a bad thing, it would just be terribly annoying to look at). After some guidance from our studio leader, Camille, I was able to complete my colour test without too much trouble. The best part of the project was actually the end, and the satisfaction I felt when I tested out the project, to discover that it worked perfectly. I’m especially proud of the simple presentation I managed to create, so that people don’t have to be confused about different buttons. However, if I had more time, I definitely think it could have been improved to make it better, such as adding a timer to make people more competitive.

Trying to incorporate sustained interaction into my work was challenging and really made me think about what makes a work interesting. In the end, I came up with the idea of achievement or trying to prove something, or a test. Things like this was what made games such as Temple Run and Flappy Bird addictive – there was always that strive to prove something to get a higher score. This was the most important thing I learned from this assignment – thinking about what captures a person’s attention and trying to incorporate that into my work. In future, I hope to pursue a career in media and editing, so I will aim to utilise this newfound knowledge when I work on my next project.

For our group project, we decided to go with a jigsaw puzzle for sustained interaction, as we intended to explore the same idea of achievement that I had for our solo work, but through different means. I found a picture and divided it into 36 rectangular pieces as opposed to traditional jigsaw-shaped pieces in order to make it more difficult, so that they couldn’t find the ‘side pieces’ first, as would be the usual strategy when doing a puzzle. Originally, our idea was just that: a jigsaw puzzle with a handy reset button, ready for the next viewer. However, we discovered that it wasn’t possible on presentation mode because we wanted users to be able to move pieces around with a mouse, and it would mean being unable to click on the reset button if we opted for being able to move pieces with the mouse. Therefore, we had a choice: to either move pieces around using the arrow keys, or make a timed reset button. We went with the latter to add to the element of frustration, setting it so that it was on a one-minute timer to challenge people to complete the puzzle in a minute or less, leaving them to chase for that feeling of achievement.

This group project was a rare instance wherein the original idea wasn’t possible, but the alternative idea actually made it better. Like my solo piece, the process was tedious, but extremely rewarding in the end. While I was initially disappointed that my original idea wasn’t possible, this project taught me to be more open-minded and to consider numerous possibilities in a work, and that it is possible to make a simple idea something clever (in this instance, a timed reset button as opposed to just a reset button). In the future, I will remember not to be close-minded and to consider numerous possibilities, and even ask other people for any ideas to ensure I do not miss a possible fresh and new idea.