DES240: Interact

Chandra Hu
Oct 28, 2021
4 min read

Illustrated Image

Final Interactive Programme as MP4

According to Our Freshwater Summary, 95 to 99% of NZ rivers running through urban and farming areas carry enough pollution that does not adhere to water quality guidelines (2020). In this project, Aaron and I work towards creating a simple interaction through Processing 3 using this statistic as our base of inspiration. Aaron was the team coder while I was the art director in charge of aesthetics and ideation research.

This interactive program is meant to convey how our decisions impact the environment, and what actions we can take to reduce waterway pollution. The task is to drag the trash into its respective container and clear the sewage by tapping on the gutter. The art illustrates society’s reliance on urban, farming and industrial production as we become ignorant of the cumulative effects on waterways to result in unhealthy ecologies. The overall message of the art and interaction combined expresses the need for control on habits and lifestyle as well as our societies consumerism.

Initial Studies - Moodboard

For my final mood board, I take inspiration from the interactive mobile story 'florence' as a reference for ideation and following processes. The visual appeal for this game was charming and straightforward which motivated the aesthetic for our visual piece.

Before this, was a second mood board that also looked at three different games for visual inspiration. These were Before Your Eyes, Assemble with Care and Gris Game. This mood board follows a different colour scheme and aesthetic.

During this phase, I also researched some sounds and artworks to inspire possible interactions and paths to go towards. These were all insightful studies that helped me into the next step of ideation in addition to the statistics research done throughout assignments 1 & 2.

Initial Sketches

I went through a rapid ideation phase to sketch nine different ideas that I could possibly illustrate. I discussed this with my teammate and tutors to decide which ideas were the best viable options based on his coding and connection to the statistic.

SUMMARY DESCRIPTIONS:

Determine the life of your ecosystem by a set of actions. Based on the items chosen by the user, the health of the fish and water will be affected.
Digitalised attacks on your fish and ecosystem. Based on the chosen lifestyle options (in a pop-up digital alert style) they will send either positive or negative attacks on the fish. The goal would be to keep the ecosystem alive.
Drag out the trash from the river to keep it clean.
Move the persona side to side and catch the rubbish (not the fish) so that it does not enter the river.
Block the pollution channel with aboard.
Move the wooden board to cover the pollution instead of the water.
Open the clean waterway channels and block the channels with pollutants.
Turn the cogs to run the water treatment facility.
Assemble the water care facility.

Out of these ideas, not all seemed suitable as something interactive so it was important to gather feedback to narrow down the scope and aim for our interactive piece. I ended up with three main ideas to choose between and made additional storyboards to expand on these.

We agreed to choose idea 3 based on feedback and team discussion. This was because it was the most straightforward and has the strongest connection to our statistics. It also had the potential for further exploration in regards to the composition, interactions and resulting effects.

Composition Exploration

To further explore possible compositions for this idea, took inspiration from New Zealand architecture and cities like Venice with had rivers flowing through the town. I somehow wanted to include the aspect of urban cities and industrial farming into the piece. This was to visualise that the setting was based in New Zealand with an abstract lens and express the issues within our urban lifestyles.

I made two different sketch perspectives and gathered feedback from my peers that the one-point perspective was more effective. This was because having the river dominate the screen between the towering buildings was more powerful in representing the matter. The different colours of the river were meant to express the different stages of pollution. Water changing colours was something we wished to include for the final output.

In the final sketching phase, I make sure to draw the buildings based on the photo collection of New Zealand Architecture I had gathered. I also applied various techniques to get the perspective correct and prep for the colouring stage.

Colour Exploration

I experimented with two colour palates based on certain pieces from my mood board. I chose the colour scheme from florence as my main mood board. I felt these particular colours would help highlight a users attention on the river in between.

Next, I choose the colours of my river to be in three different stages. Yellow for acidic, green for polluted and blue for clear. These were based on reference images from polluted water in real life.

Final Outputs

I added in the cows to symbolise industrialised farming, hence the spillage of agricultural waste entering our rivers. Lastly, the assets were prepared and were ready to be implemented into the code.

Video

We created a final video to wrap up our work and progress for this project.

Code

Here is the final code, done by Aaron.

Overall Reflection

Overall, this project has been an insightful journey into exploring how visuals and interaction can empower decision making. We have successfully made an interactive programme that delivers an intention for our statistic. However, next time it may be ideal to further explore a method for a more convincing interplay through sound effects, and other sensorial experiences. I also feel that a lot could have been done to refine the details of our piece or add extra features that would make it more satisfying to complete, such as a restart screen that congratulates the completion or incompletion of our interaction. This has been an enjoyable project working with another and I hope to continue to use the skills I have developed with Designing with Data in future works.