Imagine Cup Finals: Who’s Representing Asia Pacific?

This is part of a series to showcase the teams from Asia Pacific who are participating in the Imagine Cup Finals in Seattle. Since 2003, Microsoft has been hosting the Imagine Cup competition to bring together young technologists from around the world.

We sat down with team Bomon from South Korea to learn more about their winning innovation ‘Under Bed’, a game that makes use of everyday objects to teach children the concept of static electricity.

 

What inspired your team to embark on your respective project?
Since our team is predominantly female, we thought—why not create a game that girls can relate to? At the same time, we wanted it to have educational value, so we had an adventure plot revolving around everyday items to help children learn about static electricity.

How long did you take to fully develop your idea, and what were the challenges you faced?
It took us more than six months, from planning to actual development, where planning took up the bulk of our resources. For instance, we had some difficulties deciding on a game genre that is ‘hip’ and easy to understand, to engage our target audience. We also ran into some technical difficulties, but we value them as an opportunity to mature our skills.

What are some things that you have learned over the course of building this project?
We learned that understanding each other’s expertise and interest plays a key role in reconciling our different ideas and in our ability to communicate more fluidly. It helped us reach our goal more efficiently.

What other features would you add to your project in the future and why?
In future, we would really like to integrate a social network element so that users can play the game with their friends. We will also work towards enabling touchscreen movements as an input method to simulate how static electric charges are created, since the game is all about static electricity.

We wish the South Korea team the best of luck in the Imagine Cup Finals!

Click here for more information about the project.