There’s not long left to register to present your idea or project proposal to the Cube team! To give you a leg up on the competition, we’ve stolen a page from the Cube team’s content development bible.
The Cube team’s golden rules:
- KISS (keep it simple, stupid!)
If you can’t sell your pitch in 15-30 seconds, your idea is too complicated. The Cube is a busy place where most users engage with the content in passing. Therefore, the simplest ideas will have the most resonance with users and appear most welcoming. The same principle applies with user engagement. The average user interacts with the Cube for only 4 minutes. Because of this, the user must understand the rules of use straight away. Touch interactions should be intuitive and easy to digest.
- Cater to a wide audience
You should always build and design with the end user in mind. The Cube welcomes a wide variety of people into its space. At any given time, there may be children and families, school students and teachers, and university students and staff interacting with the space. You must therefore balance your content so that it is simple enough for a child to engage with, but also enjoyable and engaging for an older audience. The key to this is (as mentioned above) to keep gameplay simple and enjoyable, and (of course) visually compelling. Ideally, there will be tiers to gameplay, so that the content offers simple interactions for younger children, and more involved interactions for older users. Also keep in mind that your content must be accessible to wheelchair-bound visitors.
- Make full use of The Cube’s capabilities
We don’t mean to toot our own horn, but The Cube is a pretty cool space. Make sure that you design to the uniqueness of The Cube, ensuring that your content blends the projection space and the touch panels. Hint: most of the user interaction should be on the touch panels – you want to avoid having the user using the touch panels to control something high above them on the projection. You should also aim to have most touch gameplay in the middle region of the screen. It is also important to consider that there will not always be users engaging with the content – the content should have an attractive and engaging idle state.
- Gameplay should be fun and easy
Users of The Cube just want to have fun. You should never punish the user or make them feel inferior. Interaction on the touch panels shouldn’t be based on speed or accuracy. Don’t make the user multitask – design should keep the user focused on one item at a time. Also keep in mind that the number of users can vary greatly, so you must ensure that the experience is as enjoyable for one user as it is for 60.
Other things to consider:
- Why would the public want to engage with this project?
- How would they engage with it / how does the user drive it on the screens?
- Is there something in my project that has never been done on The Cube before?
- Could this project be done anywhere other than The Cube?
- What is cool about this project? What will the user tell their friends about?
- Are the project’s STEM ties strong enough?
- Does this project have enough substance to be scheduled in for a whole day on The Cube?
More information about the project proposal and ideas presentation session here.
Cube Chat 