Colorigins is a tactile color mixing and matching game designed and developed for the Sifteo Cubes tangible computing platform. By physically manipulating a set of Sifteo Cubes, players attempt to match a generated target color by mixing a provided set of source colors. Throughout the process of color mixing, players can gain experience with key color theory concepts such as value, saturation, tints, shades, tones, complements, chromatic neutrals, and the relative visual strengths of particular colors. A custom algorithm that references the spectral reflectance values of Colorigins’ source colors enables the game’s digital simulation of subtractive color mixture.
Leveraging the Sifteo Cubes platform to develop Colorigins and inform the design of its interface provides an opportunity to amalgamate both the physical and the digital, and simultaneously maximize the affordances of each. The distinctively physical experience of mixing color (like paint on a palette) is fused with the advantages of the digital medium (including Colorigins’ custom color mixing algorithm).