Outcome

Conceptual Design

We were interested in transforming what is normally a boring waste of time into a fun playful experience. We found that crossing the street is an interesting daily scenario. It's too short to be even realized. But people are still too impatient to wait for the street light. From our observation in the CMU campus, jaywalking is a common scene. Sometimes people can get impatient easily and push the push-to-walk button a lot to fulfill their desire of urging the light changing time. While they push the button many times, they are spreading some sort of negative emotions. The less patience and tolerance people give to each other, the more inappropriate behaviors and safety risks can occur. 

So we decided to create a pair of gamified objects with which pedestrians can challenge each other to see who can win the game. The game needs two sides of the pedestrians to participate. Once both people press the start button, the neopixel will light up to indicate that the game has started. Within a limited time (before they can go across the street), they will press the game button as fast as they can and the first person reaches the threshold number will win the game. We believe that adding this simple tug-of-war type game will make waiting to cross the street more entertaining.

User Feedback

We explained the concept to our potential users. I found that some of them are reluctant to use the shaker because they worry that they would be unsanitary. So we decided to change the game input to be buttons which requires less hand exposures from people and can potentially integrate with the push-to-walk buttons in the future.  

Storyboard

Making Process

1. Building the circuit

We had one starter button, one game button and one neopixel on each device. We also carefully soldered the game button to the jumper wires. 

2. Sharing data in the cloud

We first learned how to make the two devices communicate with either other. To implement it in our game, we programmed the game to only start when both sides of the players are in ready state.

3. Programming the game

We then drafted the state flow of the game and built the code without adding complicated light effects. In this step, we built and tested the code piece by piece so that it's easier for us to debug it. According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials, an average wait time at red light is 60 - 90 seconds. Assuming someone takes 1 second to press a button on average, we decided to make 50 times as a threshold that won't take too long or too short.

4. Testing the concept

5. Adding lighting animations

After testing the devices and making sure they are working properly, we tweaked the lighting effects in the ready state, the game state, the winner's side and the loser's side. We were careful to choose the colors so that they are not similar or contradict with the traffic light colors.

6. Making the high fidelity prototype

Technical Specs

List of Parts:

1. 2 Breadboards

2. 2 Particle Argons

3. 2 USB Micro B Cables

4. 2 Neopixels

5. 2 Push Buttons

6. 2 Buttons

7. 20 Jumper Wires

Code

Illustration