Guiding Design Activities

Story Purpose

Ensuring your wearable will mesh well with the desired narrative is a good place to start for inspiration, and will set a guideline. When determining the narrative purpose of your wearable, ask yourself the following questions:

What is the in-game meaning? How does your design fit in the story? This will be affected by which story world the design will be used in.

When designing for a mission, what challenge are you trying to overcome? How can wearing/using your design help you do that? 

How can your design help overcome challenges with others? In other words, can you design in a way that would make your collaborate with others when you try to solve a mission?

Aesthetic

A set aesthetic for a wearable or character can help immersion into a particular story world. When identifying the best aesthetic for a design, ask yourself the following questions. 

What aesthetic could work well with the story? 

What materials should be used? 

What color palette would fit this design best? 

See the bottom of the webpage for printable reference sheets of color palettes, vibe cards, and aesthetic themes.

Wearing on the Body

A wearable's position on the body dictates how it should be designed and created. This is important to include in the design process, to ensure the wearable is comfortable, not interfering with other wearables, and making sense narratively. Ask yourself the following questions. 

Where on the body will the design be worn? 

How can this body part move? How would it feel when the body moves? How can I wear it on this part of the body, and how do I actually wear it there (what material I need to connect it to my body)?

How could wearing it on this part of the body be used in the design? How can it be connected to the input or output?

How can the wearable interact with other people when it is placed on this part of the body?

See the bottom of the webpage for printable reference sheets on body parts.

Code and Hardware

Understanding how the inputs and outputs will work with the design is critical to ensure that the technological aspects work properly. Consider the following input and output methods, and how the wearable will be able to be used in that regard.

INPUT

• Touch: connect conductive material such as tin foil to extent (change default resistive pin to capacitive)

• Shake

• Jump (‘Free Fall’ block)

• Tap (‘3G’, ‘6G’, or ‘8G’)

• Compass (‘Compass Heading’ block)

• Radio signal (receive) [in pairs]

OUTPUT

• LED lights (static colors)

• LED lights (changing color pattern/animation)

• UV lights

• Servo motor

• Sound tunes

• Radio signal (send) [in pairs]

Reference

The printable reference sheets are located below, simply pop it out and download it in the google drive window.