Playtime in 142

You may have called it "interval" at High School but it was still playtime at heart. Our new project, the mouse 'toy', focusses on the difference between interaction and control, what makes interaction fun and how it can be used as an engaging form of control. Initial thoughts are that control is the ability to manipulate things at will, interaction is a more limited amount of influence where there is a system that you can adjust parameters for different effects but overall the system is stable by itself. The fun part of interaction comes from either the freedom to explore or the pursuit of a goal. Given a system it is fun to explore the limits of the interaction; what happens if I do this? What happens if I press these? How far can I push that? The excitement comes from discovering the unknown, bettering your understanding of it and then proceeding to push it to it's limits, or your own. Adding a challenge or a goal will encourage users to really test the interaction. How well can they master it?
During today's studio we played with code that allowed for user interaction through the use of mouse variables. This first test track the circle's movement across the page but it was dragged back by whenever the mouse was clicked;

 The further to the right of the screen you clicked the faster it was dragged back.

I then put in the same code but for the y values as well so its base movement was diagonally down at 45 degrees;

So relative to where you clicked the circle's path was adjusted.

 ...yeah...

This next series focussed on giving the user even less control. The circle was now attracted to the mouse instead of repelled by it and the x and y coordinates had a random value reassigned to them every cycle relative to their last position. The results were that when the user tried to drag it around the screen sometimes it resisted.

Lastly this one was more a play on how colour can make an interaction more exciting. This simple circle followed the mouse around the screen when it was dragged and left a little ghostly trail behind it where it went. The faster the drag the longer the tail got;

It was kinda cute...