User-centered product design of live-action game experiences

Abstract

Recently, escape rooms, or live-action physical and mental adventure games that require players to solve puzzles and riddles to complete certain objectives in order to "escape" the room have been very popular. The design of this type of game demands knowledge and expertise in user-oriented product design in a live-action game scenario that engages and challenges participants of all ages. 5 Wits Productions is in the process of producing a live-action game experience based around dozens of "rooms" that each contain physical and mental challenges for small groups of guests to solve. Using the elements of user-centric design such as storyboarding and sketch modeling, a room theme was created and refined to give users a one of a kind experience that transports them to that theme. The theme was based off of the board game "Battle Ship" where players have to sink a ship using balls to defeat the game within the time limit. The final product was a display board ball detection system that showed the players their progress in the game and what areas they needed to hit in order sink the ships.