We need you, hero!

Hasaki is a hearing-centric shooting game. In the game, you are a hero with super hearing ability. Zombies are coming, they destroyed the power system. We need you to hear where they come at night, and shoot against them.

me

Hello, I am Shuang Wu...

Web UI/UX Designer/Front End Developer...

I am a master student in UQ now, majoring in Interaction Design. I love designing cool things. Cultivating every idea to a developed work makes me satisfied. Hope you will like my design, and i will never stop discovering and creating new things...

In this project, i work on Literature Review, Unity 3D and Arduino coding, Evaluation, and Brainstorming. This portfolio documents my contributions to Hasaki project.

“Hi, hero ! More zombies are coming, prepare for shooting them !!”


Product

zombie1

Hasaki is a hearing-centric shooting game for the visually-impaired people. All you have to do in this game is to hear and shoot. There is a voice recognition system controlling the start and end of the game by verbal instruction,"Begin" and "Stop". When the game starts, first it will introduce the background story that the zombies strike, they destroyed the power system so people cannot see where zombies come at night. You are a blind hero with super hearing ability, and have to hear which direction zombies' attack come from and shoot towards it. After the introduction, sound effect of zombie's attack will randomly come from left, front or right. When hearing the attack, you have to judge which direction it comes from, and shoot at that direction. When shooting at the zombie, there will be a fired sound effect "bang", and you will hear a sound of zombie's being hurted if shoot at the correct target, but a human's getting hurted sound if shoot at the wrong direction. The first level is a normal mode, the next level has distrubing sound effect, like the rain, wind and thunder, which would affect your judgment to zombie's attack. Besides, the rader ranging device can protect user from being injured by other devices in front.

product

Infrared Remote Gun

This gun contains a Infrared remote transmitter and a electric motor. Whenever the trigger is pulled,the gun will vibrate. And when shooting at a zombie, there will be a shooting sound effect "bang", and that zombie's eye will flash.

Zombies

Each zombie has a Infrared remote receiver and a LED. Whenever you shoot at him, the LED in his eye will flash.


Radar Ranging

This is for security issue.It will alert the user if he move close to the devices in front in case they get injuries.



<---Board for connecting zombies and Unity3D

Boards for Radar ranging and voive recognition--->




Problem Space

Ability-centric Interactions

In this problem space, we are required to create some interactions from an ability-specifc point-of-view. It should be aimd at some particular users. And the interaction designed should be specific to certain ability at the same time.We are creating the new "normal", a world just for me & those like me. Therefore, the problem we have to figur out is that what kind of ability is special for that particular group, and what interactions we can design to enhance or utilise that ability.

Solution

Hearing-centric Interactions

After related research and brainstorming, we chose to focus on the hearing ability for the visually-impaired people. Since hearing is one of the most essentail sense for them to feel the world, the ability of hearing largely determines their quality of life. And this ability can be improved through training. I found out the amount and type of current games for them are limited as well. Therefore, i wanted to design a game with novel interactions, and the ability to train hearing ability mainly for the visually-impaired people.


Online exhibition video

Explanation and showcase









 Inspiration

  Daredevil/Zatoichi/Blindfold Game

   The blind swords man in Zatoichi and the Marvel series Daredevil inspired me the most. They are all blind but this doesn't stop them to be a hero. Through    exercise, they can even "see" the world more clearly by echo and sound with their heightened hearing ability. This let me think that the visually-impaired people    in reality would never gain such unreal ability, however, the auditory ability as one of the most essentail sense for them truly effect their life. The level of hearing    directly affects their quality of life. Therefore, i wish i could do something to help them improve the hearing ability, as well as bring them more entertainment.    And then, I remembered a very popular party game I played with friends. Two players have to get Blindfolded, and try to hear other's movement and hit him    with a soft stick weapon. All of these inspired me to create the Hasaki.



.

Related Work

Hearing training/Virtual system/Tencent Game

One of the most important aim of this game is to help the visuallu impaired people train their hearing ability, however several concerns have to be confirmed for this aim, for example can hearing ability be trained and improved and can our game settings have a positive effect on this? D. Larisa et al. verified that the blind people can interpret sound more effectively after practice, their recognition of sound source in the interference environment can be improved, as well as the ability to recognise the location of the sound.[1]

Lahav et al. made a virtual cane system for the blind people to explore a unknown room with the auditory information.[2] They provide the users Nintendo Wii devices as a controllor for controling the virtual role, the joystick, arrow keys and haptic feedback inspired me that joystick is a possible solution to response to four directions in our game. Besides the settings of their buttons, different auditory and haptic feedback for providing information are all can be learned.

Tencent released two mobile phone games, Seeing and Blind Flight for the visual impaired users.[3] In the first game, the users use a cane to identify and bypass the myriad obstacles while navigating public spaces. In the second game, the user would dodge enemy missiles by heeding audio cues from their right and left earphones. It is said that this game can train their hearing and enhancing their reactions. The aim and settings of this game are quite similar to ours, but we would explore some more innovative interaction ways. Therefore i am pretty sure what we do can have a positive effect.

process

This section documents my contributions to the whole project in the design process. My work consists of literature review, Unity 3D & Arduino coding and building, physical installation and brainstorming.


Outputs


This section links to all the metarials produced in this project over course DECO7385.

Name

Journal

A blog was updated weekly to record my design process, reflections, thoughts and activities in course DECO7385.

Name

Inspiration Poster

This poster presentation is a individual pitch about the concept i'd like to develope over this semester.

Name

Pitch presentation

This team presentation is the initial concept of this project after the first round idea generation.

Name

Proposal Report

This report documents the response to the feedback, related work, target audience and intended experience.

Name

Prototype Report

This report mainly documents the ovierview about the project, my design process and the intended interaction plan.

Name

Prototype Video

This video illustrates the contents in my prototype report, mainly including my design process and intended interaction plan.

Name

Prototype Appraisal

This documnets my feedback to other peers' individual prototype videos and reports.

Name

Methods for Discovery

This documnets my observation of a video, and exploration about discovery methods.

Name

Breaking Down Project Map

This map break down our project in details, which help us analysis and expand concept.

Reflection


I’m super satisfied with the final product and cooperation in team work. Basically we fully realized the intended ideal product, and it satisfied others as well. Although the project was under the restrictions of epidemic, teamwork can also be carried out efficiently and orderly. Through this project and course DECO7385, I learned a lot about team work, my problem domain, project progressing, Arduino amd Uity 3D coding skills.
As for the team work, to guarantee the effectiveness, the first thing is to form a team with members good at all the skills that would be needed in the future work. It would also be easier when assigning the work load. After allocating the work in each step, it’s important to set a deadline within the team, or it might cause delay of progress,which happened in our earlier progress. Timely communication is also important, we have to make sure that every member is working on the right track, and provide support for each other.

As for our problem domain, i believe it’s very meaningful. It motivated me to keep going whenever i met trouble. We hope our game can help train visually impaired people’s hearing ability, i also found a meaningful insights in this game. I can replace the zombie’s attack sound with some important daily sound, like the car horn, and replace the interference sound in the game with some noise in daily environment. In this way, it can help them get more familiar with the real life.

To ensure the project progress smoothly, breaking down the project is a important step. At the earlier stage of this project, i had no idea what we should do specifically until we learned how to break down the project during the course. By breaking down the project in details of every aspect, we can clear know what should we do step by step.

The major work for me is to develop Arduino devices, Unity 3D coding and to connect them. I improved these skills a lot through this project. Especially the communication between Unity and Arduino, thanks to consultation with Ben, i learned a lot how to analyse problem and dig out where the problem is in the codes.

Thanks you all. Thank you Lorna, all our tutors, peers. I really appreciate all your work, teaching, supporting and inspiring, i really learned a lot from all of you.

References

Images
[1] Wallpaper cave. "PVZ Wallpaper" wallpapercave.com "https://wallpapercave.com/w/CIScDEg"(accessed June, 7, 2020)
[2] Tenor. "PVZ GIF" tenor.com "https://tenor.com/view/bff-day-tipsy-zombie-gif-5549747"(accessed June, 7, 2020)
[3] Tenor. "PVZ GIF" tenor.com "https://tenor.com/view/plants-vs-zombies-zombie-bailarin-jasson-zombie-walking-slow-walker-gif-14690610"(accessed June, 7, 2020) [4] Giphy. "PVZ FIF" GIPHY.COM "https://giphy.com/stickers/zombies-plants-tower-defense-ZA62wiaXD5xh7or7fX"(accessed June, 7, 2020)
[5] Phupo. "Daredevil" https://www.phupo.com/2020/04/03/heres-whod-we-cast-if-netflixs-daredevil-was-made-in-pakistan(accessed June, 5, 2020)
[6] TheCriterionChannel. "Zatoichi" "https://www.criterionchannel.com/zatoichi-the-blind-swordsman"
[7] Signupgenius. "Blindfold game" "https://www.signupgenius.com/home/birthday-party-game-ideas.cfm"

JS
[1] Fancybox "presenting responsive, touch-enabled lightbox in process section" https://fancyapps.com/fancybox/3/ (accessed June, 4, 2020)
[2] Isotope "presenting filter & sort box in process section" https://isotope.metafizzy.co/(accessed June, 4, 2020)
[3] Bootstrap "presenting the layout" http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 (accessed June, 2, 2020)
[4] Github "navigation on one-page site" https://github.com/davist11/jQuery-One-Page-Nav

Fonts
[1] Fonts "Open Sans, sans-serif" https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/list/classification/sans%20serif(accessed June, 2, 2020)

CSS
[1] Bootstrap "presenting the layout"http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 (accessed June, 2, 2020)
[2] Isotope "presenting filter & sort box in process section" https://isotope.metafizzy.co/(accessed June, 4, 2020)