Past Projects
HackerHeist VR
by Calvin Wong
A cooperative virtual reality experience allowing players with different devices to join in!
Relax VR
by Jevan Dean
Relax VR is a stylized virtual reality experience that aims to relax and destress users through the use of; sound, stunning visuals and touch. Great effort went into creating these environments from scratch. All of the work is self made, using industry-standard tools such as 3dsMax, Substance Painter, and ZBrush. User testing suggested that the environments are fit for purpose and successfully promote relaxation. Not able to test due to the very few people who own a VR headset.
Hog Tale
by Tara Lawton
A systemic game that simulates hunting and gathering in a living world. The simulation also drives AI story generation and outputs an account of your play session!
Stamper
by Leia Massey
Set in the near future where welfare privatisation has increased, Stamper is a food bank replacement service which allows wealthier members of the population (Stampers) to sponsor people in need of food (Stampees). Stampees must complete an assessment to prove their eligibility and are then supplied with a SmartBand which monitors their health. Through the Stamper app Stampers can use the information provided by SmartBands and the Government, processed by Stamper Algorithms to decide which Stampee(s) they want to sponsor with a weekly food package. This critical design fiction consisted of an app, SmartBand, website and magazine spread which aimed to explore and challenge: the relationship between wearables and surveillance; the current state of UK welfare, its future and societal attitudes towards it and finally, the reductiveness of our data profiles and algorithmic processing of it.
Tranquility Gardens
by Eleanor Yong
A BSc IM final project, Tranquility Gardens was made in order to explore the statement "Building a virtual reality tool to combat general stress using creative techniques". After researching what aspects of creative activities people find de-stressing and relaxing, I put together a VR videogame to see whether the same relaxation response can be found in a person after using those same de-stressing aspects. Examples include: repetitive fine motor motion, emulating playing an instrument and listening to music. This video shows what gameplay looks like and also how the scenery is set up. Explore the gardens at your will and help tidy up by doing de-stressing exercises illustrated by the information boards. A little goes a long way! There might even be a surprise at the end if all activities are completed!
Homies
by YJ Kim
The Mobile App That Turns Your Shared House Into a Shared Home to Simplify Communal Living. This is a design project created as part of the Interactive Media Individual Project module. What initially began as a project that aimed to solve cleaning issues that arise in flatshares, the final product ended up becoming more than just a cleaning app. Through user research, the app digs deeper to help people live in harmony.
WilderBank Catalogue
by Leia Massey
This is a critical design piece designed as an intervention asking readers to reflect on the relationship between humans and nature. Set in the near future, this catalogue is designed to raise money for WilderBank a digital conservation charity. It explores themes such as synthetic biology, consumerism and capitalism, techno-solutionism and conservation. It was iteratively designed alongside research with experts, end-users and literature; drawing inspiration from the field of Critical Design. I find that everyone has different stories and reflections about this piece and I'm always interested to know them, so get in contact if you would like to chat! Please take time to pause the video in order to read and understand the piece.
Attitude Green
by Rhian Davies
A survey with 75 responses from students at the University of York, revealed that there was confusion of what can and cannot be recycled on campus. In addition, only 10% of responses said that they have visited the university official webpages on recycling on campus. Expert interviews with two key members of the university’s sustainability strategy gave insightful reasoning behind those findings. They believed that there is a sense of apathy towards recycling amongst students, as well as the confusion of what can and cannot be recycled. This research led to the development of Attitude Green- an app and an Interactive Recycling Bank, working together to improve the user experience of recycling on campus. With the development of the app Motivation Green and the Interactive Recycling Bank, gamification acts as a catalyst for increasing the motivation to recycle. The point system and leaderboard, within the app, assists in reducing apathy towards recycling. Moreover, this app helps to reduce the level of contamination in the recycling points on campus by providing an easily accessible platform to look up what can and cannot be recycled. The prototypes were made using Invision and Adobe Illustrator for the app, and Arduino for the Interactive Recycling Bank.
Lost In Translation - Developing Digital Party Games To Better Accomodate Existing Social Situations
by Ben Tailby
My final year project was to develop a new digital party game, in a similar vein to that of the Jackbox Party Packs, with the exception that it would be much more flexible to fit around the existing social situations it was played in - such as time constraints, interruptibility and differing player ability. The result is this game which is a loose adaptation of the board game Telestrations. Players have to write, draw or use emoji to continue on from or accurately convey prompts set by each other. Their answers then become the new prompts to be translated or continued. This results in a series of chains where prompts almost invariably get lost in translation.The game is designed not to take over all other social interaction happening at a gathering, but instead to work flexibly around it and enhance said interaction. It's also quite fun. Click here for a working prototype.
T.A.i - Your substitute teaching assistant
by Ben Tailby
My speculative design fiction artefact created for my Critical Design module. To solve the problem of increasing class sizes and shortages of teaching staff, T.A.i creates a virtual duplicate of your child's teacher based on recorded data both inside and outside of the classroom. This duplicate then replaces the virtual assistant on school provided devices.
EDIT Website
by Zain Albastaki
This is a responsive website made for the Equality and Diversity in Technology society at the University of York. It's made in Vue and deployed on Netlify. It utilizes Netlify CMS and Netlify forms to create a backend without having to write backend code. Netlify CMS helps society members control all aspects of the website without the developer's help, making for effective project handoff. View the website at https://edit-uofy.netlify.app/
Landscape
by Mithila Roy
It’s a game about the landscape where the player walks around the environment to collect yellow coins and pink balls. The point of collecting different items, allows the user to visualize the surroundings. There are some creatures around the house. The player can ignore them as they only follow the player around. The player can exit the game once the coins and balls are collected.
Catastrophic
by Leia Massey, Emily Martin
Catastrophic is a card game of community, conservation and catastrophe, designed to aid the learning and assessment of a module taught in the Biology Department at the University of York. Catastrophic is designed to help players make connections across large spatial and temporal scales in biology. Plant and Animal Trait cards (e.g. thick waxy cuticles and evaporative heat loss) help Species to withstand environmental Conditions that they must face in an onslaught of Events such as global warming, drought and habitat fragmentation. Interaction cards help players to support their community of Species through reproduction (by using the pollination card, or perhaps cross-breeding), protection (e.g. with the Doomsday Vault), collaboration (e.g. reciprocal altruism and obligate mutualism) or stab other players in the back with cheating, brood parasitism, predator ecesis and more. Alongside Pen Holland, Ben Kirman and Kerry Know we created version 2.0 of Catastrophic the Card Game during our time in the Digital Creativity Labs Summer Scholarship Programme. Download the game and learn more on catastrophic.york.ac.uk!
Terrarium Tuitions
by Emily Martin
Terrarium Tuition is a study motivation timer website. It allows users to build up a terrarium by adding plants into the glass container. In order to plant a cactus or succulent the user has to complete a study session of their specified time. The user has to keep the website and timer page active on their laptop and complete the study time or their plant will die and they will not be allowed to plant it in their terrarium, to keep the user focused and stop them from using their device while studying. They can also add tasks to a to do list which allows the user to input a task, cross it off and delete it. I tailored the design of this website to be simple, clear and clean as I have found a common problem when viewing websites on laptop in that they are too complicated and/or have too much content. I illustrated the websites graphics in order to achieve a fun and unique style.
The Coffee Shop
by Migle Markeviciute
This project has been developed as part of the Web Application Design and Development module. The Coffee Shop website is a minimalistic online coffee website created using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. The video demonstrates the user interacting with the website by adding various items to the shopping cart, registering to the customer loyalty scheme, placing a subscription to the monthly selected coffee delivery, completing a quiz to help them choose a coffee flavour and placing the order.
Please Do (Not) Touch!
by Migle Markeviciute, Julius Yam, Qian Wu, Adrian Maidman
“Please Do (Not) Touch” is an interactive photo manipulation single-player game that turns vandalising historic leftovers into an encouraged reality. It aims to provide a scenic abstract that is beyond reality, in a way that the user gets to decide the faith of the scene within. Users will initially be introduced into a museum experience. Within the museum space, their aim is to collect points through smudging and destroying historic paintings, whilst avoiding being caught by the security guards within. The scope of the game surrounds our belief that “Interactivity increases user engagement, and creates a remarkable experience that injects into the user's mind.”
Fight for Bread
by Ewan Rae, Gengyi Wang, Cameron Roberts
Fight for Bread was our submission for the Interactive Media Group Project. Our game is essentially a giant goose water fight set on maps based off of iconic campus locations. The game is won if the player manages to fend off the goose hordes for the entire duration of the three minute round.
Parcel Rush
by Zain Albastaki, Olive Kitteridge, Dominic Ward, Boyuan Wang
Parcel Rush is a 2D top-down brain-training game. It is meant to engage and improve players' focus by demanding concentration in order to be successful. Players have to guide a number of parcels to an increasing number of shipping containers. The parcels have to correctly match the shipping container they enter based on the icons on them.
Murder in Flat B12
by Jonathan Peniket, Yunhan Lu, Emily Martin, Harrison Fornasier
This game is a non-chronological experience where the user has to investigate different rooms to solve the murder of a student, Elizabeth. The player has to look for clues in rooms by clicking on objects with the mouse. There are some tools at the user's disposal such as the clue book, which tells the player what clues they have found, the profile book, which gives a brief description of each suspect and the guess clipboard, which lets the user guess who did the murder and what with.
Adrift Aviator
by Sam Foster, Kate Hathaway, Javahn Maistry, Emma Garcia Thomas
Adrift Aviator is a 2-D survival combat game based on a helicopter crash in the middle of the wilderness. For the main character to get rescued, they need to build a device to contact the outer world over the course of 7 days (or levels). By mining and collecting materials, the user has to craft a radio device to escape while also defending themselves against enemies in the scene.
User Experience
by Harrison Fornasier
A movie that shows a demo of what a VR experience for the York helmet could be. The movie shows how the user could interact in the VR exhibit and also shows the art style that the VR game would use (water colour).
Yorkshire Museum Memories
by Emily Martin
This is an interactive museum exhibit designed for the Yorkshire Museum, focusing on creating a unique and enjoyable experience for all ages and that anyone from one person to a family can take part in. It also focuses on providing a fun way for visitors to give valuable feedback of their museum experience to the museum. The visitors can record their museum experience using the memory form or can view other visitors memories, using an interactive timeline consisting of a collection the memories. The exhibit creates a sense of community and involvement with the museum, allowing visitors to feel that they have left their mark at the museum and are able to view other visitors memories which they can relate to. By adding their experience to the exhibit it adds it to the museum archives, allowing others to view them and for visitors to come back in the future and reminisce. Yorkshire Museum Memories was created by following the double diamond design process, conducting user research (including surveys and observations) to discover insights and information to develop a prototype from. The design software Sketch was used to create the user interfaces and made interactive using Invision.
Puzzle Hunt
by Zain Albastaki
A puzzle game that aims to engage and enhance the experience of families visiting the Yorkshire Museum.
Jailbreak
by Michael Cassidy, Mithila Roy, Daniel O'Halloran
Jailbreak is a 2D platform game based around stealth and exploration. The user plays as a prisoner whose aim is to escape and break out of the prison by finding one of the multiple escape routes by collecting the required item for their chosen escape route all whilst trying to avoid being caught by the various Prison Guards, Security Cameras, and Spotlight towers. The game is set in a five-story high prison, and its surrounding grounds. While the game world is relatively small, each area of the prison presents new challenges for the player. The player is encouraged to explore all areas of the prison in order to find one of the multiple escape routes and to find the required items to proceed with the escape routes, as each escape route will require the user to travel to various different areas of the prison. The implementation of multiple escape routes which leads to different endings allows for additional replay value as the user might want to figure out how to escape from each escape route.