CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

At the present time, extreme games are becoming popular around the world which most of the sports were invented in the US. The most practical and flexible is . Skateboarding at first was invented by the surfers who wanted to surf without the needs of waiting for the waves at the beaches. Therefore they made ramps as a replication of an undergoing wave portraying as skaters do the drop in from up of the ramp. That kind of things are still available nowadays, but the most practical things that everyone can actually do in many places is the . It is also a way of life where the skaters go find some spots with a good environment such as smooth roads, stairs, rails, empty swimming pools, etc to skate in. There are many things that skaters can do in street skateboarding because basically street skating has no rules and regulation unlike basketball or soccer. Also it is easy to skate in many good places as long as the environment supports the needs of the skater’s skateboarding capability which that means skills in mastering skateboarding techniques are really matters in finding the spots that matches personal ability, strength and guts.

At first many people would think that skateboarding is an easy sport activity because they can witness from TV or videos how easy the skaters do their tricks and

1

2

somehow the tricks tend to be the same thing over and over where in reality it doesn’t.

Most of the tricks in skateboarding are very hard to learn and it really depends on the skaters themselves. The time to learn each trick varies within individual capability.

Some people might learn very fast and some people would a whole bunch of time to learn them slowly, just like learning a lesson in a class. Basically there are two types of and stands. The styles are differed with vert (curved ramps half pipe sized) and street (any obstacles available on streets), the stands are actually the way the person or skater stand on the whether the position is regular which means skating with the person’s left foot forward and goofy which means skating with the person’s right foot forward, as simply as whether the person is right-footed or left- footed. Come to think about skateboarding, it is an activity which is most related to

“jumping on something” with many different tricks style that the skaters can perform. In addition, the most basic tricks which all skaters have to master at first is the tricks called

” which means doing a skateboard jump while the board follows the skater’s footwork so that the person land both feet on the board’s surface still. From this tricks then it can be applied to many other variety in tricks where all of them relies on the

‘Ollie’ trick as an orientation.

As explained beforehand, street skateboarding can be done in many places and by a lot of ways compared to (vert skateboarding means skateboarding in half-pipe, U-Shaped venue). Anyone can actually skate in a normal road without any obstacles, Skaters can skate and do tricks over the stairs, over the rails, or even jump over simple things like cans, rocks, gaps, or standing boards. Finding

3

a good spot to skate is somehow easy but it is also somehow hard to find, especially in

Indonesia. Most places in developed countries like in the US and Europe has good roads, parks, and many supportive environments that skaters can skate in, on the other hand some underdeveloped countries lack of such supportive things. Also there are only a few people that do skateboarding in south East Asian countries like in Indonesia where the reasons varies within environment, economy, and less influence from the people. Here, they tend to like sports like football or basketball because it can be done with many people and don’t cost much money to spend. In fact that skateboarding can be done in many places regardless of the skateboard price compared to football that needs a field and the numbers of people to play with. That is why street skating is unique in a lot of ways. Choosing the right spot is what most skaters need figure out to make them being able to practice and develop their tricks. As for an example; any person cannot just perform Ollie over 4 stairs at the first try or maybe doing board on the rails. Skaters have to choose the right obstacles to overcome at first and make sure that they master the tricks beforehand. So the levels of personal skills affect the difficulty of obstacles that the person can overcome, as for the pros, it took them many months and years of training and experience to be able to perform tricks in the environments that have difficult obstacles which needs precision and skills to be able to do tricks over it. But the most important thing that they need to know about learning to skate is that it must come from the heart and motivation so that it can be fun and enjoyable even though sometimes it is frightening.

4

1.2 Scope

This thesis will cover about methodology and User Interface Design of the Street

Skateboarding simulation, such as:

- Analyze about the current media for learning street skateboarding.

- Analyze about making a good user interface design.

- Explanation about the User Interface design to be applied.

- Build an attractive user interface for learning street skateboarding.

- Comparison in effectiveness by learning from the simulation compare to

learning from other resources.

1.2.1 Assumption

- User knows how to use a computer

- User understands the explanations including the skateboard terms and

vocabularies

1.2.2 Constraints

- The users are lack of experience in using computer

- The needs of safety precautions and equipments

- No governing body which declares any skateboard's regulation

5

1.3 Aims and Benefits

The goal of this thesis is to deliver the appropriate and simple skateboarding learning methodologies and especially the appropriate user Interface Design for Street

Skateboarding Theory Simulation. The followings are the benefits to be achieved:

- Explaining a new ways of delivering methodology system that may attracts

more people to learn skateboarding.

- Simple and attractive User Interface Design which magnetize more people to

learn more about skateboarding.

1.4 Structure

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter will explain about the introduction of the thesis topic and

background.

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL FOUNDATION

This chapter will explain about the theoretical foundation that will

support the thesis. It includes the explanation of simulation,

skateboarding activity itself, a good user interface design, development

life cycle used, etc.

6

CHAPTER 3: PROBLEM ANALYSIS

This chapter will explain further about the problem happens from the

current ways of delivering the skateboarding methodology and user

interface design they use. Additionally, reviews about some problems in

building a good user interface design and user interface software tools

used will be elaborated.

CHAPTER 4: SOLUTION DESIGN

This chapter will explain the research result, user interface design flow

chart, ideas evolution and method to implement them.

CHAPTER 5: TESTING AND IMPLEMENTATION

This chapter will explain about the implementation of the design and the

testing method including the testing results.

CHAPTER 6: EVALUATION

This chapter will discuss all of the overall evaluation result of this thesis

and discussions.

CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

This chapter will conclude all of the thesis research, works, feedbacks

about the final work, and also recommendations for the future plans.

7