CONCEPT:
The idea of this project is to set up an object that says ‘move me,’ that invites people to touch it. Moving the object sets a trigger of 3 interactive visuals that change every 20 seconds. While the audience is distracted by the visuals, trying to see what exactly each achieves, we are secretly testing to see if they touch their face during the process, ultimately transferring germs that they touched onto their face. At the end of the visuals, images of them touching their face is shown, exposing them and bringing awareness to how they may be exposing themselves to unwanted germs.
PROCESS:
As we progressed, we jumped around how many shaders, types, and styles we wanted to present. We finally reached the conclusion that we would go for 3 shaders, each signifying something and trying to achieve something.
- A simple one. We hope a simple one may make the audience feel underwhelmed and would like to overcompensate with movements
- Shocking– one to make the audience feel observed, overwhelmed, and nervous.
- Strange, difficult to understand, a bit queasy.
All these are in hopes that the audience may feel a bit awkward and fall into some nervous tics such as touching their face or covering their mouths.
The second and third where difficult to accomplish. The second was remade to make the eyes track someone, instead of opening and closing randomly. And the third took long because of the very long and complicated code. But eventually, we got the three of them to work in one code, seperated by constant intervals.
The object was created using paper, and in the shape of a pyramid. This shape was chosen because it was the easiest option to move and hold, as it has an easy grab, and also could remain the sturdiest option to create out of paper.
We also decided to add an interval shader between runs, so that the laptop is still displaying something intriguing when it hasn’t been triggered yet.
RESULT:
after testing with a few people, we came to some interesting conclusions. Although most people did end up falling in the issue where they touched their face, some did not. These people tended to be the people that I didn’t know at all. I realised that although I expected the people who felt awkward to these tics, if they felt too awkward, they tended to be very stiff, not move at all, and ‘pass the test.’ They found more difficulty in interacting with the shader. The more comfortable the person was around me (usually my closer acquaintances, the more they moved, enjoyed the shaders, and touched their faces.
Because of privacy concerns, I will only show two of the screenshots taken of the user testing
Reflection:
Despite it not always succeeding, and the social anxiety I got asking people to try my project, it was very rewarding to see people understand their error and the shock on their faces when they realised what they had done. Overall, we are really happy with our idea and are proud to have been able to implement it.