Swinxsbee
client: Swinxs
master project – duration: 12 weeks
individual project
Swinxs is a commercially available game console for children aged 4 to 12. It facilitates physically active games that can be played indoor or outdoor. Swinxs comes with coloured armbands called XS-tags. Each XS-tag contains an RFID-tag for recognition of players. The company Swinxs asked me to come up with a new play object and new games for Swinxs.
An analysis of current Swinxs games showed that all games were played individually. To enhance the social interaction between children I designed an object and games that requires collaboration. I believe that playing with a shared object can lead to a higher level of social interaction than playing with personal play objects. I designed a shared object called Swinxsbee, a frisbee with an integrated RFID-tag. I designed and prototyped two games: Ultimate Swinxsbee and Multibee. Descriptions and videos of these games can be found at the bottom of this page.
I have done an evaluation of the games with 32 children. I researched the influence of a shared play object (Swinxsbee) on social interaction. This research is published as a full paper for the Intetain ’09 conference on ‘Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment’.
Game Descriptions
Ultimate Swinxsbee is a game based on a Frisbee game called Ultimate Frisbee. The team that possesses the Swinxsbee can try to score a point by scanning it at Swinxs. But the player holding Swinxsbee is not allowed to run or walk and has to throw Swinxsbee within ten seconds to his team member. The team with the most points after 3 minutes wins.
This video has a password, because of the children. Mail me for the password.
Multibee is played in teams of two players and each team has a Swinxsbee. The players have to draw a line of 10 meters long at about 15 meters from Swinxs. Each team has a thrower and a catcher. The thrower stands next to Swinxs and the catcher on the line. On Swinxs’ signal the game starts and the player next to Swinxs throws Swinxsbee towards the catcher, but the Frisbee has to be thrown further than the line. The catcher should get Swinxsbee and run to Swinxs to scan Swinxsbee for scoring a point. On the same time the thrower runs to the line. The catcher becomes the thrower and the thrower becomes the catcher and this continues until the game ends after 3 minutes. The team with the highest score wins.
Mail me for the password.
