I like the guidebook on commonly-made physical computing projects in class. I’ve thought about what it must be like to be a professor for an intro project-based class, like Intro to CS or Intro to IM, as there must be ideas that are constantly recycled each semester and the professor will have to pretend that they’re novel even when they’ve seen it a million times before. I assume a platformer game will always show up in Processing/P5.js class. Perhaps a paint/drawing program too, a particle system/ pattern animation, recreations of classic games like Pong or Snake. That’s not to say that they’re boring, as the reading also talks about how the cliches can sometimes be used as a base for something more interesting, but it’s fun to think about ideas that are strangely common.
Despite them being constantly recycled, it is possible to make interesting, unique projects out of them. I can think of a visual novel-esque game being one that is likely technically similar across most games of it’s genre, yet the deciding factor between a good and bad visual novel is the story being told, not the implementation of ‘click to see the next line of text’. Perhaps one of the best ways of being creative is to mix-up an existing overused form of media instead of trying to be both novel and interesting at the same time, as then you might be limited by your technical capabilities rather than your creative ones. In the case of the reading, video mirrors have been done. A Lot. Yet, this means that it is relatively easy to implement one thanks to the wealth of documentation and existing implementations on the internet, and you can focus instead on the ‘what’ you want to convey through your project, instead of the ‘how’.
The other reading compliments Don Norman’s chapters from the past few weeks really well. Show, don’t tell, in your projects. Students learn better when they make the intuition between two objects, rather than memorizing the two objects. Likewise, I assume that viewers of an art piece will enjoy it more when they come to their own conclusions about it, than being told what to feel. Of course, artists are always trying to convey something, and to have every viewer of their piece think wildly differently from their intent is probably not the artist’s intention. Through the design process itself, artists can guide viewers to their intent, to gently nudge them in the right direction without having to hold their hand. I like to think about Escape Rooms in this example. The goal of an Escape Room is to escape from it, yet players will find it unfun if the lock and key are both on the same table as they might feel it is too easy. Yet, if the puzzle is too difficult, players will feel frustrated and will not enjoy it either. The designers of Escape Rooms must strike a delicate balance between making a puzzle that is not easily solvable, yet guiding users delicately to their goal. For example, the usage of a padlock vs a combination lock will intuitively guide the players on what they should look for ( a key or a code ).