Roundup
CATEGORY: Experimental, Interaction Design
CREDIT: Jocelyn Andrea Firmansyah and Nichelle Tan Yunlin
MENTORS:
Roundup is an interactive board and table mat that has the aim of encouraging bonding between family members through games and interactivity. This interactive board is an added experience for the client Illumos, a portable projector brand, who seeks to increase the time families spend together. This project is a collaboration with Ikea, and is showcased there, allowing visitors to interact with Roundup in a location that mimics their personal homes.
CONCEPT
Problem?
A common issue was uncovered when Families for Life Singapore conducted a survey showing that people were dissatisfied with the amount of quality family time they had. Although living in the same household, families do not spend enough time together. Some key findings from the survey were that even though 92% of respondents listed family as their priority, 1 in 10 people spend six hours or less each week with their immediate family. That works out to less than an hour each day
Solution
Roundup makes use of a portable projector to create an additional game feature that aims to connect families through the integration of an interactive board and a bonding game. The interactive board can function as a table mat when it is not in use, making it both a source of entertainment and a nice display piece for your house. This game feature will primarily target nuclear families but works for any family type looking to create closer bonds with each other.
Roundup will be collaborating with Ikea as the showrooms in Ikea were designed to mimic different families’ personal homes. The collaboration will allow families visiting Ikea to interact with the product and easily imagine how Roundup can be brought into their homes.
BOARD DESIGNS
As the Roundup game is a collaboration with Ikea, our design was inspired by primarily their children’s line of design. Our designs are simple yet brightly colored, designed to appeal to all ages. The first thing we created was the icons which would be projected onto the board. They were all created using the pucker and bloat tool in Illustrator for coherence. Our idea was to create multiple board designs that would work with the same set of projections. All 6 of our mat design aligns with the red shaped projections, allowing for ease in interchangeability and customisation.
PHYSICAL ARTEFACT
The final prototype is A2 in size, made of foam board. The board’s design is placed on top of the conductive workings of the foam board, and was intentionally not permanently stuck to the board to allow for interchangeability between the different designs. The material of the foam board is very lightweight yet sturdy, therefore it can be easily moved around. The simplicity of the geometric designs on our boards further aligns with Ikea’s designs, allowing it to be easily brought into everyone’s home. We wanted to make sure that this board can have multiple uses, and serve as a table mat or piece of decoration when not being played.