Can we create a new experience of the video game controller?
Roles: Experience Design, Fabrication & Engineering
Clean-Up Drive is a video game that educates players about the harmful effects of pollution. The player controls the game by standing on a balance-board style controller, and shifting their weight in one of 8 directions. The set-up consists of a custom fabricated foot-controller board which is connected to a desktop game. This project was made in collaboration with Nilomee Jesrani and built using Unity and Arduino.
Game Design
We designed a game where the play rolls around a post–apocalyptic world collecting trash. As they collect each item they slowly heal a disintegrating ozone layer. If the player collects all of the trash, and heals the ozone layer, they win by saving the world.
System diagram.
Brain-storming game concept
Sreenshots from Unity.
Controller Design
We knew we wanted the player to use her/his weight to control her/his movement in the game. So we tested many iterations of designs that might allow for that. Our final design consisted of a balance-board style controller where the player controls the game by shifting their weight in one of 8 directions.
Initial sketches of possible designs.
User testing with cardboard and scrap-wood prototypes.
The most successful prototype.
8 edges to represent the 8 directions that a user controls.
Refining the design
Final shape and size.
Controller Fabrication
The board is connected to the game via the Arduino. We placed 8 arcade buttons on the underside of an octagonal shaped wooden board. Each button corresponds to a pin on the Arduino, that reads the input from the user. We used a plugin called 'Uniduino', that allows the game engine, Unity to read the incoming serial data coming from the Arduino.
The final prototype was hand-crafted. We created a mock-up of the final design in Adobe Illustrator and laser cut it into a stencil made out of foam board. We then used the stencil as a guide during final fabrication.
Circuitboard & enclosure.
Final design and system diagram.
Play Testing
User Testing the game and the foot controller board at the ITP Winter Show. We found that it worked best for kids and adults in their 20s through 30s. While play testing, we were able to analyze the amount of time required to play the game. Accordingly, we adjusted the difficulty level my making the collectable objects more accessible, and increasing the play-time of the game by a few seconds.
