During week 4, our group focused on two aspects: testing traditional games without digital devices and exploring how the Apple Watch could enhance these games by creating demos. Afterward, we played the game again, incorporating the Apple Watch demo to assess if it truly improved playability and the overall experience. 

Our group tested four different genres of games, each tested more than three times (you can find all videos in the media session on our website). Two examples we found worth building a demo for in combination with traditional games are:

Heart Rate + Bluffing: 

Despite not having direct control over heart rate, for people who are more emotional, especially when telling a lie, heart rate does measure the authenticity of their statement. The “Cheat” card bluffing game is enjoyable with heart rate, and the team created a heart rate visualization on the watch: your heart rate shows in blue when close to your resting heart rate, and the higher it goes, the watch screen turns red. Our team added this heart rate visualization to the card game by creating an additional “checking phase” when you find someone telling suspicious things, check their heart rate. Replaytesting Result: If the checking phase appears too frequently, it makes the whole game process incoherent. Also, heart rate is not always trustworthy, as some people’s heart rates don’t fluctuate a lot, or fluctuate too much.

 Sound Detection + Tap and Freeze Playground Game:

Based on the traditional Tap and Freeze, for the catcher, rather than tapping a person to kick them off, we changed it to: if the player’s sound detection exceeds a certain value, which is the dB exceeding the threshold, that player will be kicked out. So the chaser can kick off the player without physically catching him. They can either approach him to a certain distance and shout out to increase the overall environmental noise or chase him fast so the player might inadvertently exceed that threshold. Replaytesting result: We used an existing dB detection on the phone to keep track of the dB during the following playtest, and it will be more convenient if dB detection can be tracked through the watch since it does not need to be held all the time. Also, this game needs a relatively large field, but too large a field will dilute our voice and shout.

For the next week, we will continue the routine of testing more games, trying to come up with more demos that can be implemented into existing games, and then replaying them.

-2024.2.9