“Skaters Skramble” is a interactive, audience-participatory experience that will be delved into within this conceptual design proposal. “Skaters Skramble” seeks to engage the roller derby community as well as newcomers through hands-on learning, a casual, social setting and a fun, competitive atmosphere. Its core strategy is provide such an experience through the use of accessible equipment and a Do It Yourself spirit. Crossing the boundary from passive audience member to active player is the core of what makes “Skaters Skramble” unique. Learning through doing (cited as a fundamental human process) is one of the most established teaching methods when it comes to understandingnew information and sports is no different, where the maturation of any individual is through adaptation to an environment (Kolb, 1984)(Grehaigne, Jean-Francois, Griffin, 2005).

“Skaters Skramble” will create a constant learning platform for the duration of the event, whether it’s the people currently skating in the jam or audience members helping to keep score or voting for most valuable players. Everyone can choose to be actively involved in the flow of the game but “Skaters Skramble” goes even beyond that, networking players and establishing teamwork that can create new roller derby team potentials and even new roller derby leagues.

Design For Interactive Media - DXB403Jared Cahill N8511152

Tutor: Andy Bates

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(called the “Magic Wand”). The app will be relaying important audience, statistical and game information to the conductor. The conductor aims to keep the game flowing forwards in a timely manner and this is done by directing people who are next to jam to put their skates and safety equipment on in the dressing bench, introducing each current jammer via pushed profiles (made in the app) and explaining the roller derby rules both before the game starts, when different events or penalties occur and intermittently throughout the event. The conductor also controls the games score, which is aided by the audience as they push recommendations that a point has been scored to the “Magic Wand”. “Magic Wand” is also a hub of results for the conductor when votes for prizes get cast at the end of the game.

Referees:The referees play a similar role to any other roller derby match in providing enforcement of the rules. The referees make sure the game plays within these boundaries but also support the players on the roller track providing any instruction on-the-fly if needed, such as how the lead jammer can score and why a penalty was issued.

The App:The app is the main engine behind the game which keeps track of a lot of information that would otherwise require a burden of information being applied to the conductor or an extra party. Each audience member will have the app and a centralised version is used by the conductor (“Magic Wand”). The main and most important purpose is to randomly select audience members who have opted to play, designate them a position (jammer, blocker, etc.), notify them and store that information for future reference in the game if needed. The app also holds user profiles created by audience members which can be displayed on a big screen, can set up, count and control ballot systems for prizes (Most Valuable Player, Best Dressed, Most Stylish, Best Team, etc.) and much more.

The “Skaters Skramble” experience utilises readily available and easily accessible components. The four major components include the audience, theconductor, the referees and an app used to control the game and add a level of communication between the audience, the conductor and the game itself.

Audience:The audience are what make the spectacle possible. The game, as with all roller derby’s matches, is made of two 30 minute bouts broken up into 2 minute jams. However the difference of passively watching a normal roller derby game with two established teams and “Skaters Skramble” is that “Skaters Skramble” has no initial team roster. Games are composed to two “teams”, a red and blue team, with audience members randomly selected to fill team positions for each jam. This selection is done through the app which will tell audience members when they are up next and what team they will be jamming for. The app will then keep record of all the random selections so if audience participants jam more than once, their original colour is remembered. “Skaters Skramble” can support a large audience (2 x 30 minute bouts / 2 minute jams x 10 players per jam = 300 participating audience members) but can also alter itself on the fly as the number of participating audience members changes or if the total audience is comprised of a smaller number. After each jam, points are attributed to the corresponding red or blue team and at the end of the game, the team with the most points wins.

Conductor:To help facilitate a learning environment as well as being able to help newcomers improve their decision making quality (Raab, 2009), the conductor provides instructions, direction and commentary about the game to the audience. The conductors’ main job is to organise, entertain and crowd control the audience in tandem with an enhanced version of the app

- Colour/Team Picker- Team Position Picker

- Dressing Floor Prompt- Overall Score

- Player Statistics Updated to Profile

- Distance Travelled

- Opt In or Out of Game

- Score Voting- Prize Voting

- Player Profile Upload

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= Audience Member = Colour/Team Selected Audience Member = Referees = Conductor“Skaters Skramble” has multiple people transitioning from one area to another concurrently to make the game move in a timely fashion. These movements are cyclic which help to avoid confusion and establish a pattern of behaviour. It also prepares the participating audience members for their role in the game. Each stage is as follows:Audience Bleachers:The Audience Bleachers is generally where the bulk of the audience will be at any given time. This is where the audience are able to sit, watch and cheer the game, cast votes on various prizes, upload profiles, indicate when they think a point has been scored and can opt in and out of their participation. The centre of the audience’s attention is the Skating Track and the Conductor. Ten audience members who have opted in to play will receive a prompt from the app to move to the Dressing Bench when the cycle moves forward, which is after a jam has been completed.Dressing Bench:Audience members who have opted to play and have been chosen next by the app move to the Dressing Bench. The Dressing Bench is where players receive and try on their equipment. This includes skates, coloured safety equipment and colour markers (such as a red/blue bib and helmets with colour and position markings). The Dressing Bench has attendants who aid in this process. Overall, the Dressing Bench is similar to that found when getting shoes at a bowling alley.

Holding Pen:Once players have been fitted with equipment and have been moved on (after another jam via the app) they go to the Holding Pen. The Holding Pen is a small seated area where each player is free to introduce each other and where each team can develop strategies and consider strengths and weaknesses. Within the Holding Pen are posters to explain the rules a final time and the players within the Holding Pen are also able to watch the current jam on the Skating Track. This also helps to identify techniques that are successful.Skating Track:Once a jam has concluded players move from the Holding Pen to the Skating Track to participate in the next jam. The Skating Track has referees both inside and outside of the track who both monitor play and give unbiased player support. The conductor announces the players who come onto the track via upload of the player profiles to his “Magic Wand”. All the statistics and profiles are displayed on a big screen and can also be accessed by the audience. The track itself is a standard roller derby track and each player’s starting position and the games rule set are also the same as a standard roller derby match. The audience is able to score the match by indicating when a point has been scored to the app. When 75% of the audience believe a point has been scored, it will be added to the scoreboard. Once the jam has ended, each competing player returns their gear to the Dressing Bench and returns to the Audience Bleachers. The app is able to keep track of where opted in players are within this cyclic system and monitor the distances travelled of each player in the jam.

It also aids the conductor in directing each group of players to each stage of the process.

The audience version adds interactivity to the game for players sitting in the bleachers. Audience members can:- Create and edit profiles- Cast votes for prizes- Add indication that a point to a team has been scored- Opt in and participate in a jam or opt out just to watch.

The app system is also able to keep track of input data and feed it to the appropriate game mechanics such as:- Remembering what team each person was randomly selected- Averaging a team with even gender numbers for both jamming sides- Uploading distance travelled, number of jams and games played and record each position (jammers, blockers, etc.) a player has done to the users profile.

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Audience Version Displayed

At the heart of “Skaters Skramble” is the flow of communication and data between the audience, the Conductor and the game itself. The Skramble app facilitates storage and transferal of data but also more importantly creates less need for crowd control people.

The “Magic Wand” is an authoritarian version of the app used by the Conductor to access different data such as:- Profiles of player called to the Skating Track- Results from each of the prize ballots

“Skaters Skramble” relies heavily on roller derby’s strengths to appeal to a new and wider audience. With 38% of fans being attracted by having someone they know involved and 57% of female skaters hearing of roller derby through friends or people they know involved (WFTDA, 2012), “Skaters Skramble” basically aims to get more people involved and thus more word on the street.

With this user centred approach, the consideration to look into what the fundamental needs of not only participants in roller derby were but also the audience and community in wider context. There was a real need to respect each facet and what they wanted from their individual agency (Keinonen, 2008). A similar yet more basic system resembling the “Skramble” app can be seen with the iVo proposal of an interactive audience voting system (Aboud, Albers, Nemes, 2004).

The audience interactions offered new possibilities to an otherwise passive sporting event especially regarding education and learning, community and teambuilding as well an enjoyable entertainment value. It was important to add these values while simultaneously keeping the focus on the activity rather than the technology and this is where the experience of Skaters Skramble really comes to light (Maynes-Aminzade, Pausch, Seitz, 2002). Each person at “Skaters Skramble” can become part of the overall event, no matter where they find themselves, but at the same time, equally important is to give them the choice. “Skaters Skramble” has a simple ruleset and system which can be easily modified and evolved to suit the needs and changes of roller derby.

The casual, social aspect of the game brings together a whole range of diverse interests. These can include experienced players who want to teach a new crowd, groups of friends interested in a different team sport experience and could even have the ability to have a children’s only event to really get back to grass roots. “Skaters Skramble” can connect people together, where successful roller derby teams could possibly launch their roller derby career from.

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Aboud, S., Albers, M., Nemes, T.(2004). iVo : Interactive Voting for the Olympics. CHI EA ‘04: CHI ‘04 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing System. Vienna, Austria.

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Grehaigne, J., Richard, J., Griffin, l. (2005). Teaching and Learning Team Sports and Games. p. 49, 50.

Keinonen, T. (2008). User-Centered Design and Fundamental Need. NordiCHI ‘08 Proceedings of the 5th Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction: building bridges. Helsinki, Finland. P. 211-219.

Maynes-Aminzade, D., Pausch, R., Seitz, S. (2002). Techniques for Interactive Audience Participation.

Raab, M. (2009). Discovery learning in sports: implicit or explicit processes?. International journal of sport and exercise psychology, 7 (4), p. 413.

Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. (2012). Roller Derby Demographics: Results from the Third Annual Comprehensive Data Collection on Skaters and Fans. Retrieved from http://wftda.com/files/roller-derby-demographics-2012.pdf

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