BIO-INSPIRED CHAMELEON GAME
October - December 2014
Our team was challenged to design a play experience for fourth graders inspired by the motion of an animal- in our case, the chameleon.
The many odd characteristics of chameleons- a projectile tongue, independently moving eyes, grasping feet and tail, and color changing skin- gave us plenty of options for the type of motion off of which to base our game. We started with the most dynamic: the motion of the tongue. Enclosed within a chameleon's tongue is a tapered bone spike surrounded by collagen sheaths, which in turn are surrounded by rings of muscle. When it's time to strike, the spike is drawn forward and aimed. The muscles squeeze the collagen sheaths against the bone, causing them to lengthen and begin to store energy as the contracting radius causes them to slide forward along the tapered bone. Upon reaching the end, the sheaths are suddenly able to relax and release their stored energy as they telescope outward and propel the tongue toward an unsuspecting bug. We didn't intend on using such a complicated system in our game, so we brainstormed a number of mechanical devices that could achieve similar motion through simpler means. We were especially intrigued by novelty ice cream shooter toys, which mimic a chameleon's tongue mechanism surprisingly well. Instead of a tapered bone, the foam ball on an ice-cream shooter is loaded onto a plastic rod, and energy is stored in a spring in the ball rather than in collagen sheaths enclosing the bone. However, when it comes time to shoot, both the tip of a chameleon's tongue and the ball of an ice cream shooter push rapidly against the launching rod and are propelled forward, stopping when the reach the end of a long, flexible tether.
With a basic motion in mind, we could begin to ideate game concepts based on the user group we planned to target. To know what kind of toy to design, we needed to figure out what kind of toy people wanted. Primarily, we needed to know what kids would play with; but we also needed to consider what parents would buy and what society would support supplying in toy stores. Through research and conversations with fourth-graders and their mentors, we established a basic framework for what each stakeholder wanted from the toy design. Based off of this input and the tongue motion of chameleons, we brainstormed a few game concepts and decided that 'Chameleons vs Bugs,' a more strategy-based version of Sharks and Minnows, was the most relevant to our goals and could use further development. Through play-tests in which we played the game with a group of peers, we were able to narrow down the game concept to a finalized set of rules.
After conceptualizing our chameleon game, my team and I were able to from a cohesive idea of what the toy design would need. Firstly, we knew the chameleon would be mounted on the arm of a fourth-grader, so it needed to be lightweight, appropriately sized, and have an easily accessible trigger. Additionally, the gameplay required that the chameleon's skin randomly change color- while real chameleons change color by adjusting the spacing of nanocrystals in their skin, we opted for strands of colorful LEDs controlled by an Arduino instead. From this point, it was only a matter of giving the chameleon appealing character. We added a wire tail, bulbous foam eyes on a foam head, a tongue made from an ice cream shooter head and length of ribbon, gripping 'feet' in the form of a velcro strap, green fabric skin for the parts that didn't light up and translucent rubber for the rest of the chameleon. With the visuals all in place, our toy, christened Charlie, was ready for play-testing.
Our game was put to the final test when a group of fourth graders came to visit the campus. Groups of six children (the 'bugs') were given two different colors of antenna headbands, and the child wielding the chameleon attempted to shoot whichever bugs matched the chameleon's current color as the bugs moved around a playing field. The fourth graders quickly got the hang of the game, Charlie's operator happy to take any opportunity to unleash her foam tongue. One young play-tester even hung around our booth for the rest of the session in the hopes of more chances to play with Charlie!