Basics of Interactive Systems/Media-oriented Computer Science

For the lectures “Basics of Interactive Systems” and “Media-oriented Computer Science” we had to work on a few exercises and implement a few (mostly useless) things which I’d like to present here.

Each of these programs is provided under an MIT style License. The license can be found here.

Image Pair Game

The task of this exercise was to develop a game in which pairs of hidden images have to be found and which could either be controlled using the mouse or the keyboard. Afterwards, it was analyzed using the GOMS method which alternative is more efficient. But of course it’s also a lot of fun without the scientific background. Here it is!

Simply download and execute the JAR file. The source code is also contained in the file (just unpack it with any ZIP application). To execute the game, you need the Java Runtime Environment 5 or higher.

• Download the Image Pair Game JAR File, 42 KB

Grit – The Picture Analyzer

Grit is a Picture Analyzing program. It consists of seven image fields that show different colour components of an image. To load an image, drag the image file from your file browser to the topmost image field. The other fields will then display the three RGB colour channels as well as the colour, saturation and intensity channel.

Afterwards you can also drag another image file to a different image field, then only this channel of the picture will be replaced by a black-and-white version of the dragged image.

Please notice: Grit only works with PNG files.

Simply download and execute the JAR file. The source code is also contained in the file (just unpack it with any ZIP application). To execute the program, you need the Java Runtime Environment 5 or higher.

• Download Grit JAR File, 17 KB

Malte – a simple Drawing Program

Malte is an extremely simple painting application, with which you can do nothing else but draw white lines. At least they are anti-aliased using a self-programmed algorithm.

Simply download and execute the JAR file. The source code is also contained in the file (just unpack it with any ZIP application). To execute the program, you need the Java Runtime Environment 5 or higher.

• Download Malte JAR File, 9 KB

Food Vending Machine

This very creative exercise was about redesigning a food vending machine that was located at our university and was quite... well, let’s say tricky to use. Our goal was to create a new “user interface” for the machine.

The result can be tried out in the following little Flash presentation. You can’t only navigate through the slides (which, unfortunately, all are in German), no, you can also try out the machine itself. Just try to buy something to eat and experience how easy it is to use the machine now!

Have fun!

• Download the interactive presentation SWF file, German, 18 KB
• Read the explaining document PDF File, German, 654 KB