ProjectProposal-VolodymyrKalish
From CS 160 Fall 2008
Contents |
The Eye Exerciser (aka iExerciser)
Target User Group
Many people around the world have some sort of vision impairments. Although some of these impairments are irreversible and permanent, some can be treated or even avoided. We are talking about people who lost or lose their vision due to countless hours spent behind the computer monitors. A small subset of such people could be EECS students coding and debugging a long project.
Problem Description, Context and Forces
The problem arises because people who work on computers focus their eyes on the screen for hours at a time. There are many different eye-exercises recommended by physicians, but who wants to do boring exercises when there are interesting online games that can be played during break time? (Dolphin Cup anyone? :)) Playing online games helps people to relax and regain focus on the work, but it also adds to the problem of losing vision due to, once more, too much time spent looking at the monitor. So, can we kill two birds with one stone by creating a game that is fun to play and helpful in eye exercise?
Solution Sketch
The answer is yes. This can be achieved by creating a serious game that forces people's eyes to focus at different points and training eye muscles as a result. One solution could be to use 3-D magic pictures that reveal an image, a letter or a word if it is looked at in a correct way. (The example mentioned "hides" a dollar sign "$") So, any time a player sees the “hidden” image, he/she will enter the result into a box and earn point for doing so correctly. There can be levels that increase based on the amount of effort required to see the hidden message. And, of course, the higher level, the more the eyes get exercises, and the games gets more thrilling and exciting.
Image taken from: http://www.magiceye.com/
