Co-located face-to-face social interaction using multiple smartphones

• Main Author: Tee, Yu Chao
• Other Authors: Goh Wooi Boon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Software
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66781
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

For this project, an Android game is developed with facilitating teamwork and collaboration among children aged 6-12 years as its main focus. A game and its interface is to be designed, created and tested using a pre-developed spatial engine which makes use of the smartphone’s camera to detect the coordinates of the player in a predefined arena. The purpose of this project is two-fold. First would be to create viable games making use of the engine that has been developed prior to this project. The second would be for the game to act as an educational tool for children to learn communication and collaboration skills through cooperative games. The developmental stages of children are first researched on to learn what children are proficient in, and what they are developing between 6 to 12 years of age. Next, the principles of cooperative game design are looked into along with cross referencing other recent cooperative games that have been created in the past. The knowledge gathered from these sources are used in the design of the game. The principles of good user interface design are used for the design of the game’s interface, and the game’s logic as a whole is coded using Eclipse and the Android development toolkit. Due to time constraints a tabletop prototype was used for testing to generate preliminary user feedback on the game’s design and system. The survey results show that the game created has achieved its goal of encouraging communication and collaboration as a team to achieve a common goal. Players would also like to try the game again to attempt for a better score. The tabletop prototype however had its constraints which deviate from the experience of the actual game. Further work can be done on this project by implementing the full game and generating another round of user feedback. This can be used as research material to act as a comparison of the user’s experience with the tabletop prototype and the full game, inclusive of the arena. Recommendations to improve the game include using a revised scoring system, a way to give bonus points and adjusting the scaling of the game’s screen with respect to the arena