Leah (bookooBread) and I worked collaboratively on this project. Most of our time was spent brainstorming ways to create something less technical and more conceptual. Immediately we decided to make a website that would give a sense of relief/a break — a first idea was to create a website similar to https://smashthewalls.com/, a game which allows users to “break” the wall of their screen to lean more into the cathartic side of our main concept of relief. However, we decided that our prediction for what the experience would be like was not satisfactory in terms of the cathartic element as well as in terms of the telematic aspect, so we quickly moved on.
After many other short-lived ideas, we decided to pursue the calming side of relief rather than the more aggressive one we had previously been considering. This resulted in the idea of creating a quiet forest/pond scene in which the interaction would consist of user clicks which would result in ripples in the pond water. Some initial sketches:
While the idea of a pencil-drawn-esque environment with “animated” “rain” is nice, this format severely limited where the users would actually move to just the small portion of the screen where the water was. This idea is cute and could be effective, but I would rather it be an actual animation with no or at least different form of interaction.
The lack of space in the idea which included the environment in the background led to the decision to omit it completely. We then were confronted with the decision to keep the visuals hand drawn or to use code. The hand drawn ripple sketch is shown here:
While the hand drawn style is nice, it disallowed the possibility of two ripples overlapping each other. Also, if it were hand drawn and code was just used to cycle through an animation, there would be no point to use code.
Thus, the final product:
https://grizzled-south-shoe.glitch.me
After the presentation, I think a good next step would be to add sounds (either raindrops, ambient music, or both) to make it more immersive. Another thing would be to limit the number of clicks a user can make per some time increment so that it does not crash.