Concepts

Concept 1:
I used the memory match game as an inspiration for this concept.  I thought about having the application as an actual game where you flip cards over by clicking on them, to reveal a sound.  Each sound would have a pair and you'd have to find all the matchs to complete the game.  But I think having an end to the game would lose the users attention and I want to make the game more unique.  Therefore I thought about still having the cards that you flip by clicking on them.  But instead they flip and move around depending on how fast and how much you click the card.  When the card has flipped it will still play a sound and reveal a visual but when you "disturb" the card enough it will knock into it's surrounding cards, setting them off and making them flip too.  When you knock the cards hard enought they will shatter.

Concept 2:
For this concept I wanted to use a natural thing, weather.  I want users to be able to create their own weather by the position, speed and force they click and drag the mouse.  The more extreme the movements and clicking of the mouse the more extreme the weather.  The weather I want users to be able to create is rain, thunder, lightning and tornados.  Good weather will occur when the user leaves the application alone.  I also thought about adding a figure to the bottom of the application to make it like the user is the weather and is trying to get the person at the bottom.

Concept 3:
In this concept I wanted to have a sequence.  I decided to use instruments as the visuals and sounds.  I also wanted the sequence to have a clear path, which is why I joined them by the guitar strings.  Users will be able to interact with whatever part of the application they want, to create a different sequence every time.  I will use simple shapes that relate to the sounds of the instruments.

Precedents

Memory Game
http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/fm.cgi
The memory game is a fun, interactive game that you can play with any cards.  You play by memorising where cards are and taking turns to flip over two cards to get a match.  I thought the memory and matching aspects of this game could be interesting to use in my interaction.  I would have to think of a way to add sound into it though.

Sound Waterfall
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=27992
I got a lot of inspiration from this application I found on Open Processing.  I really liked how they chose a natural thing (a waterfall) and made it into an application using sound and colour the way they did.  It is a really exciting application to interact with.  I want to try and incorporate something from nature in my design of my application.  An aspect of nature I think could be interesting to work with is weather, so below I looked at some photography of weather.

Sound dots
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=25796
This application is simple but effective.  I really like how it has a sequence and how it continues playing round in a circle while you interact with the circles to change the sound.  I also like it how the visuals are simple but relate to the sound they're making.  I wanted to use this as inspiration for a design that has a continuing sequence where you interact with it to change the sound.  I will make the visuals and sound more complicated though.

Project 3: Sound Shape

Final Interactive Mouse Toy

http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=36210
  
My application gives users a purely visual response to interaction.  Depending on where, the direction and the speed the mouse is moved over the circles, they grow.  As they have low opacities, when overlapped the circles make different shapes where they intersect.  As you move the mouse off them they slowly shrink back to the origional size, leaving behind a trail.  The two black squares are opposites in colour and that when the mouse is moved over the circles on one, the circles on the other are the ones that grow.  When the circles are clicked they disappear allowing you to create patterns in the background and to choose which circles you want to grow and overlap.  With this application I wanted to create an interactive conversation for the user that had a simple movement of the mouse, and opposite reactions to interactions that play with users minds and allowing them to create endless patterns with overlapping circles.

Development

1.
I tried changing the shape from circles to use squares to see whether other shapes would make a better effect and found this also made a different, interesting effect although I think it still needs more to it.
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=35816

2.
To make my application more interesting I looked at another precedent, a chess board.  I liked how it uses two completely opposite, simple colours, black and white, how when starting the spawns are opposite.  The spawns even have circle base which kind of relate to the circles on my app.  I used this idea of opposites and split the screen into quarters, having a different shape in each quarter.  But I think the circles are the most interesting shape to interact with.  Having all quarters do the same thing isn't exciting enough to make people want to interact with it for more than a few seconds so I think I need to add something different.
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=35817


3.
I thought about adding something completely different and splitting the screen in two, having the increasing circles on one side and lines that follow the mouse and change colour on the other.  I found this was the most interesting application so far and held the users interest for the longest but I'm still not quite satisfied with it.  The two parts are too different and don't relate to each other at all.
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=35822

4.
Here I tried to make it so not only the circle that the mouse was on grew, but the surrounding circles also did.  I really like the effect this makes.
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=36202

5.
In this application I did a similar thing to development 4, and made the surrounding circles affected by the position of the mouse too.  But I made the amount of circles affected more and reversed it so that the further the circles are away from the mouse the bigger they grow.  This can create some interesting patterns as the circles decrease really slowly and won't grow again until they reach the origional size.
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=36203

6.
This application is very similar to the previous one.  The difference is that I didn't reverse it.  I think the last one was a lot more interesting as its not what you expect.
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=36205

7.
Here I decided to go back to using the idea opposites with the chess board and the four squares.  I expanded on the idea of opposites though.  When you move the mouse in the black, it makes the opposite circles grow.  Whereas when you click the mouse on the white square it makes the circles in the opposite grow.  I really like this as it kind of plays with your mind a little bit.
In this application I also tried out colour but I think for my final interaction I will go back to using black and white as this fits with the idea of opposites better and relates to the chess board.
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=36028

Chosen concept

After doing a few simple experiments for each concept I decided to develop on my second concept as I think this one has the most potential to be an interesting interactive toy.  I realised soon after I started writing my code for each individual circle that the code was going to end up being really long, therefore I started using arrays instead.

Concept Two:
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=35815

After completing this concept I was happy with the idea of the circles increasing and the effect that it made but I need to think of a way to make it more interesting.