Last week, we did our first user testing for our idea, we presented our cardboard prototypes and got a few points to check back and research. As our prototypes were small, we need to make it bigger, but fit a child’s hand. The direction that we lead the user to play with our game need to be visible in terms of colors or shapes on the toy. The way that the game will be built and get to visible outcome – help them understand how to solve problems. While Ruta did a great research, and Xiwei on the BOM and system diagram, I tried to think of a good way to convey the idea of building the 3d prototype. We got to a conclusion that stacking is not enough for our toy, and decided to split our first “floor” to four pieces. Them our next level can react to first one, and third level can change one of the elements in the second level.
I started with the sketching in illustrator the pieces that eventually repeat itself:
This is the result after laser cutting two pieces. I wasn’t calculating the distance that the material will take in order to close the shape, so we had to cut the few walls in order to see the pieces connect nicely.
We eventually completed the shape by cutting the reflected pieces:
We thought about trying to get an invisible connections of the pieces by magnets, and consulted with Sam and Joe from 2nd year about it, and we got some magnets coming. I see the toy made out of wood, and trying to get my fabrication homework getting to know better all the machines we have to check what will be the best way to make it happen.