Electronic Tic-Tac-Toe

Introduction
Tic-tac-toe is a popular pencil-and-paper game for two players. It is played by taking turns marking the space in a 3-by-3 grid with the symbols, O and X. The player who succeeds in placing three respective marks in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line wins the game.

This simple and intimate pencil-and-paper game has been modernised. Followed by the progress and creativity of humans, the game has been turned into a form of technology. The technology design places more importance on the human interaction and physical computing.

In a relevant example in the bounds of Physical Computing project “Electronic Tic-Tac-Toe with RGB LEDs” by a group of students, their idea of what Physical Computing should be.


How is this related to physical computing?
Yet, the project cannot be completely established as a Physical Computing. In this project, there are a few things that do not fit the term “interaction” as what we have defined for Physical Computing. However the players require interacting with buttons to control the position to respective the mark.

A proper Physical Computing is how human communicate with computers by expressing themselves physically. The intention of “Electronic Tic-Tac-Toe” should be using a finger to directly point to the chosen position to mark the space. What we call the Physical Computing is an advanced technique which allows the use of multiuser interaction with technology without an indirect operator. Examples of an indirect operator can be mouse, keyboard, button or other object which requires the user to interact with it via sensing, sound, light, vibration or other methods of interaction that allows the user to control the device. Therefore, a genuine “Electronic Tic-Tac-Toe” of Physical Computing allows the user to use their hand to operate the interface, which can be personally on the scene of the game.

Video from YouTube:




Critique
This project fails to express what Physical Computing really means. While reviewing this project, I came up with an idea of making Electronic Tic-Tac-Toe to be more interesting and interactive with the users, and not rigid like pressing the buttons to shift the RGB LED to the chosen spot, and cannot restart the score that had already recorded, and cannot restart the score that has already recorded.

In my future work, if I’m making another Electronic Tic-Tac-Toe, my inspiration for this will be for the user to use their hand to tap on the chosen position. If the player is more excited with the game play, they might tap at a fast speed, and the sensor can then read at the fast speed and respond rapidly. The score of each round will be recorded on the top of the 3x3 grid, and if the players wants to reset the score, they can do so by tapping at the space between the players' scores.

References
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=z_sor6nu8S8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac-toe