Playing with the doodle bot

Conceptual origin

In the very beginnning of the project I created a collection of photos relating to some of our experiences on the internet. I then categorized these experiences and was able to work on the motive/functionality of my avatar from there. Referring to my moodboard, I wanted to incorporate elements of games like scribble.io, quiz up as well as pinterest to personalize the avatar. These are platforms I attach strong memories towards and thus I thought it would be appropiate to include these into my avatar and it’s environment.

Process

Creating the avatar started with a rough prototype. I kept some factors into consideration when making this, such as using imessage as the platform the avatar/environment would be in. Heavily inspired by the interface of scribble.io I brainstormed to make it such that the environment my avatar was in catered to the avatar itself. This is why I changed the interface to black/white, as though it were scribbled/drawn on. I came up with my first prototype of the game, which was meant to be a communication platform through which users talk through images, eventually leading to a scrapbook of doodles.

The however the idea was not unique and didnt quite test the abilities of technology.

And so I scrapped the idea and created another game. The game goes as follows:

• One of the players summons the doodle bot to start the game. Upon doing so you are given the option to continue the game or not.
• The doodle bot gives you a prompt, and you begin to draw (whilst the other player tries to guess).
• With every guess delivered, the doodle bot releseases data relating to the guess. So for example if the player were to guess an umbrella, the doodle bot will retrieve images of an umbrella that are in the players phone.
• This is a reocurring pattern throughout the course of the game, the player can quite by clicking on the ‘x’ mark on the top right corner of the page.

I created the avatar through a simple illustration on procreate and made the final prototype of the game on figma.

Conclusion

The process of creating the game was tedious, as I constantly found myself scrapping out ideas for newer and better versions of the game I wanted the audience to play. I had to bring in elements such as narratives and personas which was a little challenging to accomplish.

However, I am very happy with the way the final prototype has come out. The game is simple yet illustrates the story of how the internet knows everything about us, how technology now owns every piece of personal data we own. I am glad that I was able to create an idea like this into an actual environment.