Washing Warrior

Washing Warrior

Kinect Game Made for Bosch Series 6 Washing Machine Launch Campaign

Washing Warrior is a double-player game consisting of 2 rounds, "cleaning battle" and "sterilizing battle" to
highlight the two main features of Bosch Series 6 washer.
Players participate by swiping in the 1st round to clean the clothing, and dragging the O3 onto the bacteria in the 2nd round for sterilization.
Their overall score and ranking can be shared on social network (wechat HTML5 page) to attract more players on site.

Work at 造物 | 2016       Teammates: Leven, Ming, Treize        My Role: Designer, Project Lead   Skills: Kinect Game Design, UI Design Tools:  Unity, Kinect SDK

Game Design

"Washing Warrior" only permits two players competing against each other in the first round.
Considering that Chinese customers are too shy to get on the stage and play alone.

While only those who survive the first round could proceed into the second,
which means the second round could be played by one player solely. 

To promote the new function in Bosch Series 6 Washer ---- "The Smart Control Ring",
players wave their hands clockwise to trigger each round, the same way they are supposed to handle the smart control ring in real life.

In the 1st round, "cleaning battle", the more clothes players clean, the higher they will score.
If anyone score lower than 70 in the first round, they will not be able to play the second round,
but they will be given a "Washing Warrior Badge". 

In the 2 round, "sterilizing battle", similarly,the more germs they kill, the higher they score.
Only those who score higher than 70 will win and be given the "Active Oxygen Superman Prize”,
otherwise, they will get the "Active Oxygen Warrior Badge" instead. 

Design Process                    

As project manager and game designer, I was responsible for ideation, game rule design, UI and animation design.
I collected feedback from our client, Bosch Household Appliances, on a regular basis over the two-month-long period, and led a team of 4
including C# programmer Leven, Unity 3D modeling engineer Ming Zhou, HTML5 engineer Treize and myself.

UI Design

Overall, a simple yet elegant metal background is adopted to convey a sense of technology and reliability,
while embedding several visual cues of Bosch Series 6 washer,
such as the "Vario Drum", the "Smart Control Ring", the "Bosch red", and even the "Active Oxygen" spray in the stand-by scene. 

On the other hand, as children are expected to be the majority of participants, the game interface need to be intuitive,
the visual effects need to be fun and eye-catching to hold their attention.

Prototype Test

During the 10-day-long office prototype test, several problems were spotted and solved through the team's effort. To name a few: 

1. Initially, we made the players draw circles in the air for “cleaning”. The quicker they draw, the faster the washing drum rolls, consequently,
the more clothes they can clean. However, players easily got bored, for they could have total control over the result.
To enhance playability, the rules were changed. Players can only target one specific clothes each time.
Their swipes may or may not be taken as effective, depending on their targeting accuracy.
In this way, players can enjoy a healthy amount of unpredictability.

2. At first, each item of clothing had to be effectively wiped 4 times before it disappeared into the drum core.
But our test revealed nobody could survive the first round. So we loosened the standard to 2 wipes for each piece of clothing. 

3. In the beta version, the style of clothing were pretty uniform, later we added sportswear, silk, wool, etc.
to demonstrate that Bosch Series 6 is able to treat various kinds of clothing.

4. Considering that our campaign would be held in places where stable network may not be available,
the data exchange between two computers (since it's a duet game) was achieved by LAN (local area network) with a LAN switch. 

Field Test

Throughout the 3-week-long campaign, over 15,000 people participated. Based on their feedback and my observation,
our team perfected the game in the following aspects: 

1. More than expected, over 90% of participants were children under the age of 10, who were notorious for disregarding the game instructions,
whether in the form of words, graphics, or even the guidance of the host.
So our C# engineer re-adjusted the program to make it acknowledge a wider range of gestures,
even those that were deemed as nonstandard. (After all, we have to be careful not to discourage our 5-year-old users.) 

2. In the original design, pictures of players would be automatically taken on site and shared on social network with their gaming results.
But children are not the most cooperative object for a camera. So that got cancelled and only the scores, badges and ranks were shared. 

3. In case some children could not play the game for their failure to perform even the nonstandard gesture required to enter the first round,
I equipped the system with Ultra VNC Viewer so that a click on the remote laptop can help rescue the game if anything goes wrong. 

4. The average time it took players to scan the final QR code was about 12 seconds.
So we reprogrammed the QR code to stay for 15 seconds, so that the next group of players did not have to wait too long. 

What I learned from the Process