JYLLIAN MARIE THIBODEAU, UX SPECIALIST
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      • Expediting Onboarding
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      • Beatles Rock Band (2009)
      • Lego Rock Band (2009)
      • Unplugged (2009)
      • Rock Band 2 (2008)
      • Rock Band (2007)
    • VidRhythm
  • Home
  • About Me
  • CV
  • Projects
    • Hireup >
      • Expediting Onboarding
      • Automating Documentation
      • Project Dossier
    • Medical Director >
      • 2021: A GP Odyssey
      • Patient Timelines
      • Self-building Care Plans
      • Proactive Drug Warnings
    • UX Consultancy
    • Fantasia: Music Evolved
    • Unreleased Kinect Project
    • Dance Central Series >
      • Dance Central 3 (2012)
      • Dance Central 2 (2011)
      • Dance Central (2010)
    • Rock Band Series >
      • Rock Band Blitz (2012)
      • Rock Band 3 (2010)
      • Beatles Rock Band (2009)
      • Lego Rock Band (2009)
      • Unplugged (2009)
      • Rock Band 2 (2008)
      • Rock Band (2007)
    • VidRhythm
Picture
Release: 2013
Platform: Xbox One & Kinect 2.0
Studio: Harmonix

With a new console generation on the horizon, the studio assembled its most experienced staff to create a brand new next-gen Kinect game.

The new game would be more immersive than previous titles, allowing the player to freely navigate in an environment.  As someone who had spent countless hours with Kinect hardware and players, I was tapped to design a control scheme that would feel natural, intuitive, and comfortable for long periods of play.

I began with systems of real-world steering, inspired by cycling, surfing, and bird flight.  Subtle core movements could control most manoeuvres, with a few discrete motions to change to direction and momentum.   I showed players mockups of gameplay footage and asked them how they would control the character using these themes.  Trends quickly emerged— nearly everyone steered by leaning forward, back or side to side.  They twisted their torsos to turn corners, and held out their hands to stop or slow down.

I designed a library of motions — easy to execute, natural to transition between, and distinct enough for Kinect to interpret. We found that folks tended to mimic the movements of the player character, so we leveraged his body animations to help teach the standards of the gesture language.

From here the process involved capturing as many gesture variations as I could and feeding them into our machine-learning system.  I worked with the design and engineering teams to build telemetric tracking for controls and collectibles, so we could pinpoint instances where things almost worked, and assess common misfires and their causes.  Creating these systems proved enormously valuable experience as we moved on to create our next Kinect experience.



My contributions included...
  • Designing and tuning an ergonomic gesture library for 3D motion controls.
  • Collaborating with systems and level designers to create gameplay that leveraged controls well.
  • Developing telemetric tracking for player movement and action around the map.
  • Motion-capturing and grading hundreds of variations in gesture execution, to ensure the best detection.
 
Typical design questions
  • How do people naturally guess to move around the game world?  How can we work with expectations?
  • What discrete gestures will we include to give the player skills and abilities for use in the game?
  • What controls are simple to learn for newbies, and comfortable to execute for long-term play? 
  • How can we solve detection issues that arise when players execute gestures hastily?