Weekly Summary

Before this week, we had mostly finished the technical aspects of the app, so we spent the majority of our time developing and polishing the user experience such that it is an actual usable and enjoyable app, rather than just a technical demo of what we have created this quarter. We started by completing our dry run presentation, which showed off the more technical features from previous weeks of work. As feedback from this, we were told that we needed to consider a “wow” factor that impresses a user or gives a reason for wanting to partake in our app. We first considered applying our soft body physics onto various existing sculptures and pieces of art so that a user can manipulate them and make them their own. However, after speaking with Timea regarding this direction, she encouraged us to focus further on a particular artist, Jeff Koons. Koons is relatively controversial in the art world, due to his hands-off nature and tendency to delegate work to employees in regards to his work, and is even referred to as “the first CEO in art”. As such, in the art world, Koons is not universally respected, and thus we thought that our project, Deformable Ceramics, could be a way for artist to poke fun at his work. We feel confident that this direction is a strong user story and will be understood by our target audience of artists, thus our finished project reflects the style and work of Jeff Koons. From a technical standpoint, we also added in teleportation functionality so that a user can jump from one objet to another without having to walk over to it, as well as an export to .sts option so that users can save the meshes and export them for 3D printing if desired. This also contributes to the user experience that they have a concrete use case for developing work, rather than just the joy of creating.

Team Member Contributions

Zoe: Implemented the .sts export ability, as well as added noise to the interactions with objects so that a user knows when an interaction has been completed.

Joanie: Wrote snippet 9, as well as developed the cohesive narrative of what objects should ultimately be in the final gallery for demo day, as well as wrote the short biography of Jeff Koons that the users will see when opening our app.

Emi: Created the final dry run presentation slide deck, as well as implemented teleportation around the scene such that a user can press a button and be moved to a particular statue

Madrona: Continued performing user testing and receiving feedback regarding the user experience. Helped develop the storyline regarding Jeff Koons’ work with Joanie

New Features

  • the ceramic objects are now in a gallery-type room
  • the objects are all shapes inspired by Koons
  • teleportation feature to move around the scene
  • export as .sts option
  • sound effects when the objects are interacted with

Files for Review

Blocking Issues

  • No blocking issues :)

Links