Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Perceptual Fun with The Eyeballing Game

The eyeballing game was created by a woodworking hobbyist. The premise is described as follows:

Some people are bothered by pictures on the wall hanging slightly crooked. Others may not even be aware that something may be amiss.

If you are somebody who is into woodworking or construction, its good to be one of the people who notice when things are crooked. But I suspect the ability to notice that things might be just a little off square, off centre, or not quite straight, varies greatly. I thought it would be fun for people to try to test their abilities to see if things are straight or crooked in a little game.


The game presents you sequentially with three sets of seven shapes. Each shape has an associated task: the first thing you do is make a parallelogram out of a distorted four-sided figure, then you find the midpoint of a line, then you bisect an angle, etc.

As someone who has been known to adjust crooked pictures even in other people's homes, I find this game all kinds of fun -- and I figured that at least some people who read this blog might also enjoy it. I've been able to get deviations of zero (0.0) on a few items, and have achieved a best overall score of 2.18 2.06 at this point -- would be curious to know how other folks do.

4 comments:

Anna Martelli Ravenscroft said...

Thanks for the link. That was fun. I got Overall score: 3.46

I'll have to try again when I'm more awake.

Marla said...

Awesome! I am going to try that.

I just posted on a comment Dennis Leary made. I would love it if you posted a comment about it if you have time. Thanks!

AnneC said...

Anna: Yay, glad you liked the game. I have a few complaints about the interface (it seems like it might be problematic for people with certain kinds of mice or trackballs) but it's definitely pretty nifty regardless. I've done a fair bit of drawing in programs like Visio, GIMP, and MS Paint (as well as on paper), and I could definitely feel some of the same brain-parts activated by those programs being prodded when playing the eyeballing game. =]

AnneC said...

Marla: Cool, I would guess you would probably do pretty well -- so far of the people I know who've tried this game, the ones who are into art and/or photography seem to be getting the highest scores. Though the interface of the game can be a bit twitchy -- it would be neat if there were some way to test "eyeballing" skills without necessarily having motor skills in the equation.

And, re., Denis Leary -- ugh, as I said on your blog, I will be very happy when (or if :/) random people stop zooming in on autism as something to rant about in order to further their entertainment career or their agenda (like PETA recently did).