Agile Aces- Electronic Agile Workshop Game

Overview

Whenever our project sponsor, Paul Mittan, Director of Penn State’s Engineering Leadership, holds workshops, he has to hold a clunky cardboard box and inconveniently large bag of balls around campus. Not only this, he has to deal with the unnecessary amount of overhead it takes to play this game, which leaves no time for Paul to actually get to his lesson. Our proposed game solution has made the process of transporting and playing the game during his workshop more interactive and engaging.

Objectives

The objective of our project is basically making the game more efficient to play and making the equipment more sustainable. At this point, we focus on creating the digital aspect of the game so that it is more user-friendly, along with physical sensors to detect balls being thrown into the basket. Meanwhile, we redesign the basket so that the whole system we have works more efficiently, and makes the game equipment more durable.

Approach

The approach of our team on solving the problem:
Gather statistics about game from sponsor
Practice playing the game and simulating the workshop experience
Consider frameworks for the game user interface
Consider sensors for ball detection
Consider API to integrate sensor and the user interface
Design CAD funnel designs for ball retrieval
Consider portability options
Portable power?
Designing a cart? Backpack?
Dimensions of game containers?
Perform iterative testing to test counting accuracy of sensor
Re-play the game with improved prototype and compare game playing times

Outcomes

The outcomes for this project and how the problem of the sponsor was solved:
The sponsor will be able to complete playing the game in roughly half the amount of time it took originally
Reduced assembly/dismantling time
Significantly reduced ball counting time
More coherent game play
Improved portability capabilities