Victoria

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March 29, 2007

Rat Race - 2-4-8 IKEA project

07 CTIN 548 Project Evaluation
from Thesis Prep perspective

1. Document your project
Post a photo and 50-60 word description of your project.

http://www.kirinthedestroyers.com/mousemaze.jpg
http://www.kirinthedestroyers.com/mousemaze2.jpg
http://www.kirinthedestroyers.com/mousemaze3.jpg

My project was intended to be a 2 player game in which two players race mice to opposite ends of the maze. The first player to reach their opponent's start, or to catch the other player in their territory, scores a point. The first player to two points wins. The game was intended to be quick and have the potential for strategy. I built a maze, using the cabinet as the base and placing wood planks on dowels as the maze walls, and had mouse shaped RC cars to run the maze.

2. Process
How did you decide what to do?

I spent the first one and a half days brainstorming all kinds of ideas for how the cabinet could be used. I brainstormed general ideas (nature, art, movies, etc), as well as the layout of the cabinet (the cabinet as a base, the cabinet as a box, the cabinet as a piece of furniture, etc). I talked with friends outside of the program and explained to them the constraints and my ideas for the cabinet, and after going over the possible problems/technicalities of all the ideas, I settled on the idea of a maze.

On which day did you settle on a plan? Thursday
When did you actually get started? Friday

Did you prototype? Yes

How? The designs for the maze were drawn and redrawn several times, to plan for the size of the cabinets, the length of an average game, and how many players. The walls were cut so that there were extra pieces, and no pieces were set permanently until it was tried out. I drew out several iterations of the maze before I built, then taped the combinations of walls onto the maze floor before making them permanently. The walls were finally spaced to be about twice the size of the mouse for easier maneuverability.

How (or did) prototyping inform or alter your final project? It did, but due to the limitations of the quality and availability of the cars, all the planning during the prototyping phase kind of fell through.

What, in terms of process DIDN'T work this week? How will you avoid this issue while doing your thesis? I think committing to a project that used a certain type of RC car that was highly unavailable and low quality without doing research first on these was my biggest pitfall. Had I known that the cars would be like this, I might not have done the maze project at all because to use reasonable RC cars, I would have had to build a maze at least 3 times as large.

3. Rate your project in terms of your expectations. I would have to give it a 6/10 as far as meeting my expectations. In my opinion it is a well made maze, and for my first time using power tools to build something I think it came out really nice. I was kind of unsure of myself when I drilled my first hole in the wood, but now that this project is over it's nice to know that I built something that looks pretty nice. The loss of points is mostly because I didn't achieve what I wanted to, and that was to make a fun two player game out of the cabinet. Due to the low quality of the cars, it was more of a frustrating and confusing game experience. It's amazing to see how such a little thing can change the course of an entire project.

Posted by victoria at March 29, 2007 2:13 PM

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Posted by: marientina at March 29, 2007 7:53 PM

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