My original pitch for the P Comp final was “I want to smash things”. I was fed up with projects that were tied to laptops and other delicate technology or projections that have no corporeal presence. Instead, I wanted to make something that existed as an object on its own that required a fully physicality.
I considered a number of different ideas (including conductive smashables and foam bananas) but eventually settled on light up blocks that can be used to build a tower and then knocked down! I’m hoping to capture the childlike joy of building, then destroying.
For the play test I wanted to see if people would build a tower and then knock it over if I provided the blocks. I also wanted to use the opportunity as a quick materials test for the plastic boxes I’d sourced.
I wired up some LEDs to see how they would look inside the plastic boxes and to see how they would hold up to being thrown around.
My take-aways from the play testing were:
- No one knocked the tower over on their own.
- People generally wanted more interaction, wanted the blocks to do more or to have more of a construct around the interaction.
- More people played with the blocks on the floor than expected.
- If they change to the same color each time it gets boring.
- Maybe they shouldn’t change color at all until they fall.
- ITP people/ adults might treat things too delicately. (But people really liked it after they knew they could kick it)
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