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UX/UI | Dec 2018

KUNG FU MOUTH

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Background
Every year, Laix, my former employer, holds a hackathon competition to encourage participants to develop an innovative product in a very short time. In 2018, I participated in this hackathon, and “Kung Fu Mouth” was the work that our team completed during the period.


DURATION

Three days

PROGRAM

Hackathon

WORK TYPE

Team work

ROLE

3D, UI desinger





Photo from Youtube

In China, English pronunciation bothers many people, and we find that pronunciation accuracy is closely related to the mouth shape. Therefore, our company developed an ability to track the user’s mouth dynamics through the camera to determine whether the user’s mouth shape meets the standard requirements. During the competition, this technology was still at the laboratory stage.







IDEA DEVELOPMENT



Brainstorming


In the hackathon, our team decided to use this technology to do something interesting, so we gathered in an office and brainstormed.




Dressing up the mouth, mouth racing … everyone gave their opinions, but they did not seem to be good enough. When everyone was about to be silent, I came up with an idea: placing the mouth model in a scene with an organ. Whenever the mouth reaches a certain shape, the lips touch an organ and a series of reactions occur. What if the organ is related to the standard mouth shape of the pronunciation?


In this game, the user controls a mouth model. At each level, the user has to speak a phonetic symbol, and the mouth shape is correct while the pronunciation is in progress. When the user’s pronunciation plus mouth shape meets the pass conditions, the mouth model can just touch the nearby organ, let a marble fall into a hole, and then pass. If the mouth amplitude is too small, it will not touch the organ. If the amplitude is too large, the ball will not fall into the hole accurately.

When I put this idea forward, everyone thought it was very interesting, so we decided to use my idea to play.

Later, I decided to call this game “Kung Fu Mouth”, because I feel that training my mouth shape is like training for kung fu with my mouth (very casual).







DEMO



Pass Demo



Fail (No sound) Demo



Pass & Fail rule


For the next three days, I was the only designer on the team, responsible for 3D modeling, rendering, and UI design. In the end, we only made one level and presented it as a demo in the presentation. I think this is enough to convey our creativity.



3D Modeling

Finally, I would like to thank the judges for giving us a Creative Award.