Noticing that my ideas were mainly related to tours, I tried to combine all the ideas and see if that made any coherent sense. I also tried to think about the kinds of emotions I could try and evoke from the Conductor and Maze ideas.
Varying the interaction so that instead of controlling the tempo of the piece, the user can cue in sections of musicians with their right hand and increase or decrease the volume of that section with their left hand.
Instead of being the conductor, I wondered if the user could instead be a part of the orchestra and play an instrument along with them. A music score would scroll along, but the user isn't forced to follow it (especially if they can't read music).
Instead of being the conductor or orchestra musician, the user is a soloist giving a recital to a large audience. This could help a person deal with stage fright.
This variation on the maze adds an extra challenge where the user is encouraged to actually explore the maze due to obstacles preventing progress. The user is also able to chart the maze on a map. This was inspired by the Etrian Odyssey series of dungeon crawling video games.
Returning to the conductor idea, I thought about conducting in a different context - one that is more abstract. Here, the user controls ambient sound effects and notes in a nature setting, evoking a sense of relaxation and surrealism.
This idea is the one that became Skippy. Rolling with the idea of creating ambient sound effects along with surrealistic elements, I thought about the idea of skipping stones to make the sounds. Originally, the user would have to fling their head to skip a stone, which I ended up not implementing for various reasons.
Inspired by the Japanese Buddhist myth of 賽の河原 (Sai no Kawara; Riverbed of the Netherworld), a limbo for dead children where they stack stones by a riverside for eternity, this is a video by a river where you stack stones to create ambient music. The higher the stack, the more harmonies and sounds and the nicer you feel -- until it falls over, encouraging you to start over.
Having chosen the stone skipping, I thought about the actual point of interaction since I wanted to avoid having the user awkwardly fling their head. The idea of Nintendo Switch controllers came up at some point during a discussion, and I realized they would be perfect as they were a good, handheld size and the trigger button afforded a hand grip very similar to the one one would use when actually skipping stones. Ideas that didn't make it into Skippy include actually having to pick up stones, and rubbing the stone to create a particle effect.
Instead of ambient sounds, the stones strike the "edge" of the video, creating cracks in it and eventually shattering it. This is based on my own memory of how time flew and my disappointment at having to leave.
Following up on the idea of disappointment, I considered having the stone speed up the video a little every time it skips, so that the more stones you skip, the more quickly the experience is over.
Some ideas on what else the stone could do upon skipping across the surface of the water aside from just creating ambient noises. This is where the idea of flowers came to me.
Further refining my favourite ideas for additional effects (e.g. flower per skip vs at the end; single-colour vs. multiple-colour pillars/puddles).
Having chosen the flower, I considered how the flower itself could be varied to avoid being boring. For example, its size, type/shape, and a sound effect that plays when it blooms.
Further refinement of the flower's blooming.