Spooky, the Tantrum Ghost
Spoiled or misunderstood?
Hey everyone, meet Spooky. Spooky has some issues with separation anxiety so they are quite scared of being left alone. Please stick around, otherwise Spooky might act a bit embarrassingly. Please do not take it personally, they just cannot help themselves. But rest assured, if you give Spooky enough of your presence it might stay calm for a bit longer. Sorry for the trouble, good luck!
Dewi, Linthe and Boet
Spooky is an attention-seeking creature that will throw a tantrum if no one is in front of them.
Concept & Experience
When Spooky sees or detects no one in front of them, they become emotional and throw a tantrum. A tantrum can be thrown in different ways, but Spooky tries to be as annoying as possible in this case. They will try to be as attention-grabbing as possible with movement, sounds, and lights.
However, they will stop their tantrum and be happy if they detect someone in front of them. Their tantrum will cease and become quiet. This moment of silence between the user and Spooky allows them to connect. This is when the user interacts with Spooky and is pressured to stay with Spooky as long as possible unless Spooky throws a tantrum again.
This explains the tantrum (red) and happy (green) state. The last state, the calm state (blue), occurs when you leave Spooky alone for long enough. However, the time for ‘long enough’ changes. If someone stays with Spooky (happy state) for a long time, they will feel better due to the companionship, which makes them tantrum for less long and reach the calm state quicker.
Therefore, the user must balance the annoyance and relief they would feel with Spooky and ultimately decide how close they are to Spooky so they can choose if they would leave.
Context, Inspiration and Motivations
How the idea formed
Before considering Spooky, a tantrum creature, the team wanted to create a creature based on the "Joy of Repetition". A prototype built for this initial creature ended with the creature having erratic, 'crazy' movements, and it broke. The idea was wholly reconsidered; however, the prototype's erratic movements inspired the team. The team could perceive these erratic movements as the creature being annoying, angry, or perhaps throwing a tantrum.
However, when would one throw a tantrum? Perhaps when they don't have what they want. Or, possibly, they want to have someone's attention. This is how the idea of an attention-seeking tantrum creature appeared.
Creature-ness & interaction
Why would Spooky be interesting? Spooky provides a space for users to interact and understand how they would interact with a tantruming creature. People emphasise Spooky and want to ensure they don’t throw tantrums, which makes users care for Spooky. This gives exciting insight into whether people leave, stay, for how long, and how they feel about Spooky.