Board Game Interface
- Enhance the distributed nature of these games
- Opportunity for multiplayer games
- Close to traditional nature of the game but even more enhanced
PACT Analysis
People: The groups that could be involved in the use of this prototype include basically everyone: young and older, children and teens as well as any adult. So, the knowledge background of the possible users of this prototype varies a lot. As the nature of the games being played in this prototype is more complex, the system should be simple enough to be understood (especially for chess) by all possible users.
Activities: The scope is to provide to all the users a way to play traditionally beloved games in both a tangible and a distant interactive way. It gives as much fun and even more that what the traditionally played game. The playing process should be quite simple as all the users should use the different pins to follow the rules of each game and play it.
For example, in chess the Pins should represent the different pieces of the game. The same applies to word checkers, tic tac toe etc. Whole process involves a number of different activities for each game: for the first one (say chess) the Pins have to be placed in the right order on the Fabric and have to be moved each time following the rules of the game (go back and forth), the second one (say word checkers), is to make several attempts to guess the right letters and find the hidden word (something like the Hangman Game).
Pins should represent the letters that are needed for the game and finally the third one (say tip toe), is to place the Pins and move them, place/replace them or remove them from the Fabric to different positions each time according to the game’s rules. The activities performed need cooperation as they involve more than one player (actually two). Players do not need to enter by hand a specific type of data as this is performed somehow automatically with the choice of the Pins that they decide to place on the Fabric. Each of the Pins should represent a specific data which should be “processed” by the Fabric. The activities are safety critical for the health of the players.
Contexts: The activity of using Pin and Play concept and tangible interfaces for playing games like chess or tic tac toe it could happen everywhere, either indoors or outdoors. The prototype should be quite safe and resistant to several unwanted circumstances such as accidents occurrence (water/dust resistant). The Pins should be “programmed” in a quite flexible way so as to be somehow able to be recovered missed pieces/pins. Fabric is itself quite strong and not that vulnerable to misuse. Pins should not harm children.
Technologies: The data that has to be input is not that complicated as far as the users’ part is concerned because it does not involve typing something. It just operates with the placement and replacement or movement of Pins on the Fabric. However, the way that pins have to be placed needs to be quite clear.
The output also is easily to be interpreted as both visual and maybe acoustic ways are used to indicate this. These follow the “usual” and “internationally” accepted ways to interpret the success and failure. The system should make explicitly clear when a word or letter is found successfully or not. It should indicate also wrong moves by sound and lights (i.e. in chess and word checkers).