The Big Idea

In Fridays studio we presented the two best ideas we had to the tutor to talk over.  The ideas I presented were the monster idea and a bunch of calculations trying to figure out a way to put power in a way that everyone can understand.

My tutor liked my work on both ideas but said I needed to figure out which one I was doing and to what audience and how I was going to present the interface to the user(portable device, PC etc.) After talking it over I decided that the monster idea probably lent it self to children more than any other audience so focusing on that the tutor suggested I call it a creature instead of a monster as monsters are seen as scary.

Another reason for changing the name was because I had an idea to change the creature so that instead of feed off the excess energy you use it would require you to use certain amount of power every day, calculated by filling out a quick form, and if you went over this amount it would start starving the creature and making it sad and weak.  The reason for this is that I thought if the creature got bigger by the more energy you used, people would purposely use more energy to make the creature bigger.

For where the creature will be placed, at first I thought it could be on a computer, but then I realized children lie to move around a lot.  So to make sure that the children are constantly checking their energy usage and consciously making sure to save energy, the interface would have to be on a portable device.  I still haven't decided to make it on a stand alone device or allow it to work on existing portable devices such as gaming consoles and ipods, but more research should help me with this decision.