Hand Gesture Research

As we have planned, we want the user to be involved as much as possible.  This would engage the user into human control.  Its a fun way 

In computer vision interface for interactive computer game, gestures can be used as commands for the game control instead of keyboard or mouse. The use of hand gesture in human-computer interaction enables human operators to interact with computer environments.  This paper proposes visual gesture recognition for manipulating objects in a board game such as chess. The distance between a player's thumb and index finger is used to determine whether the player is in the state of holding a playing object or not.  Hand holding an object is tracked until it is stopped and put down the object by widening the distance between the thumb and the finger. The thumb-index distance is measured using the distance between two consecutive peaks of hand.

Kinect Xbox

Kinect has been widely used as an interactive gaming system by Xbox.  I have researched Kinect because I feel its relevant to our game.  We want to be enable to engage people to our game and involving themselves.  The video below shows ways you can interact with Kinect.











From this promo video I have thought that within our game, we could make it super interactive with your whole body not just your hands.  This is a new idea.  I think this would work even though our game concept isn't finalised yet.  Including your whole body won't just keep the user involved but it's a good way to keep fit which is a bonus also.



Theres an inspiring part where the girl rolls over and the tiger does this alike.  This shows you could use your whole body to operate the game.  This could be a useful idea for ours.  This is because I think it would attract more people towards our game, although because we are only mocking this up, we would have to think how we would demonstrate this.

Monster Media

We spoke to Sue about idea with being interactive.  Our idea was to really engage our target audience as we believe this is key to getting messages across to youth, our audience.  For inspiration, Sue showed us a company called Monster Media.  Monster Media are a company that help others come up with design solutions that they aren't capable of.

Compass Point Media reached out to Monster Media to help promote Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield’s 75 years of bringing consumers better health. We developed an engaging and physically immersive interactive jump rope game for users to participate in as part of a Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield mobile tour. Displayed on a large, 3x3 linked LCD wall the jump rope game challenged users to begin their better health by jumping the virtual rope. Custom, live-action talent enticed users to walk over to the system. Through Kinect depth-keying technology, a user’s body was recognized when standing in front of the wall to begin the games. Participants were then given three tries to score as many jumps as they could, while the game progressed in speed and difficulty. Once the user finished their experience, Wellmark encouraged users toward a future of better health.

Celebrating and promoting better health, Monster Media went interactive getting users involved in jumping a virtual rope.  The screen is made up on 6 LCD screens.   

I like the way they have kept in style with their colour choices staying very light creating a resemblance of clean, creativity and activity.   

This has given us inspiration to create a huge board with interactivity.  We are raising awareness for Biodiversity and I think creating a big screen will capture people's attention.

WWF Biodiversity & Global Warming

Carbon pollution is the main reason our planet is getting hotter, increasing the chances of weather disasters, drought and flood and hurting our health.

There are solutions.  For starters, we can cut carbon pollution by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and increasing our use of clean, renewable energy. And we can implement policies that help us prepare for flooding, drought, storms and other consequences of climate change.

Points to consider for climate change are:

Extreme Weather

These are:

Heat waves are periods of abnormally high temperatures in certain parts of the world.  Excessive heat is often accompanied by high levels of humidity, but can also be catastrophically dry.

Cold waves are a cold wave is a weather phenomenon that is distinguished by a cooling of the air. Specifically, a cold wave is a rapid fall in temperature within a 24-hour period.

Hurricanes are a huge storm.  They can be up to 600 miles across and have strong winds spiraling inward and upward at speeds of 75 to 200 mph.  Each hurricane usually lasts for over a week, moving 10-20 miles per hour over the open ocean. Hurricanes gather heat and energy through contact with warm ocean waters.

Reading back through the brief the main focus that they focus on is biodiversity and this is the area they want us to focus on.  Biodiversity is covered mainly in four areas and climate change is a huge problem globally.  It's a vast problem that the majority of the planet are still not taking awareness of this issue.   

WWF - Biodiversity - Planning & Fur Trade

We have been discussing how we can potentially reach our target audience of 14 -24 year olds.  We loved the idea of including interactivity into our design using the Mini Not Normal campaign as some inspiration.  We took a look back the brief and found something that we haven't really focused on.  Below is a screenshot.

Something here that needs to be highlighted and dressed is 'The importance of biodiversity, iconic species, key habitats and our use of natural materials.'  Our basic ideas were to use silhouettes or shadows or endangered animals on an interactive screen.  These could then be controlled within a game or animation to save the animal.  We came up with idea mainly because it's interactive and fun. People can get involved into the problems that we are trying to address via using hand gestures and movement.  Was wasn't really considering biodiversity as in all living things.  We want to raise awareness about biodiversity and the illegal trade of souvenirs such as fur, ivory, sustainable fishing and global warming.

Fur Trade

After doing research into illegal fur trade It's apparent that this is still a huge problem even though it appears to have been cut down a lot.

Each Year, approximately 50 million animals raised on fur farms around the world, which account for the majority of the world’s fur production, will are killed for their pelts. This number does not include rabbits as accurate figures on the number of rabbits slaughtered annually are hard to come by, but it is estimated that yearly more than a billion rabbits are killed for their pelts. In France alone, 70 million rabbits are killed every year for their fur.


In 2009, there were approximately 300 fur farms in the United States. Wisconsin has the most farms (71), followed by Utah (65), Oregon, Minnesota, and Idaho. In 2011 over 3 million mink were killed for their pelts in the U.S, all in the name of fashion. In Wisconsin, farmers killed and skinned 1,050,580 mink, while Utah murdered 698,960 of them.

The environment these animals are kept in are very small and condensed.  This type of intensive confinement can result in self-mutilation, cannibalism, and high-level stress that weakens the immune system and makes animals more susceptible to disease.  This is ultimately really sadening knowing wild animals are being kept captivity this way and then behaving the way they are.  This Mink in the photo will be slaughtered for It's fur.

Quick Idea: Being interactive, we could have a game along the lines of rescuing animals out of their cages and into the wild.  Just a quick idea to be thought through and developed.  

Further Research/ MINI 'Salute'

We have ongoing research into our idea of encouraging a young audience into helping the wildlife.  After looking over the brief again, we noticed we needed to implement a digital artefact into our design.  We want interactive.  We want to use billboards in the street to attract a person passing by to our campaign.

Below is a small description of the campaign. 

Above, spotters that spot passing Mini drivers and record their car colour, information.

This is the part that I love and makes it personal.  A passing Mini Paceman driver in red passes along the highway and these billboards are set up ahead.  The guy in the first photo is where he records information about that driver.  This then beams up to the billboard a message, which the driver can see. You da man?

Another shot above of the passing driver.

Above is the second billboard saying that this Paceman driver is the man.  This at first would make me feel a bit strange seeing these live feeds if I was the driver but Its a really great idea of a communication message.

Another example here a billboard saying to a Mini driver to wave to star in that poster.

Another ahead saying Get ready.

Followed by SMIIIIIIIIIIIILE!!!!!!

Followed by another message.

And now we have the final photo.  Its great interactivity and in my opinion on another level.  A creative level too.

Here's another example above.

The whole point of this campaign was to reward Mini drivers as they pass.  One other example was on a billboard 'Are you hungry' or something like that and they asked them to pull in the next lay-by and rewarded them with hot sandwiches and food.  The main focus was rewards.  The Campaign was called NotNormal.  I love the way they just rewarded Mini drivers and the whole interactive part of whilst there driving is great on a hot summers day.  Below are some screenshots of people being rewarded by Mini.  

Mini girls telling them to pull in.

Drivers being rewarded with food.

Driver being rewarded with a Mini giveaway.