Our article examines a flexible approach to designing general game components inspired by traditional game components. Our goal is to design digital game systems that offer the players greater choice ...in dictating the rules, pacing, and sociability of a game session—we describe this as supporting socially negotiated gameplay. We introduce five design principles of flexibility: dispensability, live tweakability, tangibility, mobility, and value. Our work demonstrates this approach with the design of an augmented game system composed of playing cards instrumented with near field communication chips and a mobile device with three digital game components: a Card Viewer, a Score Board, and a Turn Keeper. We report on initial user sessions and articulate two emerging challenges for supporting socially negotiated play: (a) solving interaction costs to enable greater flexibility and (b) managing user expectations for the automatic part of a manual–automatic system.
In an effort to better understand the learning potential of a tangible interface, we conducted a comparison study between a tangible and a traditional graphical user interface for teaching ...preschoolers (In Portugal, children enter preschool at the age of three and they attend it till entering school, normally at the age of six) about good oral hygiene. The study was carried with two groups of children aged 4 to 5 years. Questionnaires to parents, children’s drawings, and interviews were used for data collection and analysis and revealed important indicators about children’s change of attitude, involvement, and preferences for the interfaces. The questionnaires showed a remarkable change of attitude toward tooth brushing in the children that interacted with the tangible interface; particularly children’s motivation increased significantly. Children’s drawings were used to assess their degree of involvement with the interfaces. The drawings from the children that interacted with the tangible interface were very complete and detailed suggesting that the children felt actively involved with the experience. The results suggest that the tangible interface was capable of promoting a stronger and long-lasting involvement having a greater potential to engage children, therefore potentially promoting learning. Evaluation through drawing seems to be a promising method to work with preliterate children; however, it is advisable to use it together with other methods.
Real-time, rich-media data communication between the construction site and the off-site design office is becoming one of the important research areas in information technology for construction. This ...paper presents the concept of a telematic digital workbench, a horizontal tabletop user interface integrating mobile computing and wireless communication to facilitate synchronous construction site to office collaboration. We demonstrate the capabilities and potentials of this system concept for construction defect management. The on-site crew uses a handheld mobile device to collect defect information and transfers the information to the design office through wireless communication by sending the information to a database listener. The digital workbench application monitors the database and synchronizes the location of the visual information on the site with the 3D model on the server. Integrated with 3D viewing capability in a CAD system, designers can interact with the combined model/site data using a horizontal and vertical screen. A case study compared the telematic digital workbench against paper-based and Pocket PC-based methods for defect management in a controlled laboratory experiment. The case study results show that the telematic digital workbench has the potential to improve the accuracy of matching site data to digital data and reduce information loss between site and office collaboration.
Purpose: Tangible physical maps which are enhanced by new digital forms of interaction can become an invaluable asset for learning geography in an embodied way. The purpose of this work is to ...evaluate an interactive augmented three-dimensional (3D) tangible map on which students interact and travel with their fingers. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 58 fourth-grade students from eight elementary schools participated in the study. The participants played with the FingerTrips environment in 24 sessions and in groups of two or three. Each session lasted for about 20-25 min. After completing the interactive game, the students answered a questionnaire concerning their attitudes toward the tangible environment and participated in a short interview. Findings: Students' responses revealed that FingerTrips managed to transform the experience of meeting new places, understanding spatial relations and learning geography. Students supported that such an approach is closer to their interactive experiences and expectations, and exploits embodied learning affordances to achieve enjoyable learning. Students identified their finger-based trips as an effective and intriguing static haptic guidance that helped them learn more effectively. Originality/value: The specific approach has two distinctive characteristics. First, a new interaction style on the map is suggested, the use of trips with fingers. Students have to follow predefined engraved paths on the 3D terrain to sense distances and changes in altitude and "touch" the topology asked to understand and explore. Second, it is examined whether a low fidelity interactive 3D terrain, which can be easily reconstructed and reprogrammed by primary school students, can become a useful canvas for learning geography.
We present a field study with a game for children called ‘Tap the little hedgehog’, which is played on the TagTiles console, a tangible electronic interface. The game was developed to train and ...assess cognitive skills and includes tasks which, in isolation, exhibit a high correlation with a number of subtests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III-NL). The tasks address a range of nonverbal skills by requiring children to perform different operations on abstract patterns such as copying, reproducing sequences from memory and mirroring patterns. In the current study, we tested whether these tasks kept their ability to address these skills if included in a gaming context, whether children are able to play the game independently and whether they are motivated to play the game. The results of the study support the hypothesis that nonverbal IQ-scores, as measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, can improve by training with a game. Hence, games like ‘Tap the little hedgehog’ can be used to train specific skills and serve as a screening tool for these skills. The results also confirm that children can play the game independently and that they enjoy it. We further found that children quickly learn how to play the game and use the interface.
inFORM Follmer, Sean; Leithinger, Daniel; Olwal, Alex ...
Proceedings of the 26th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology,
10/2013
Conference Proceeding
Past research on shape displays has primarily focused on rendering content and user interface elements through shape output, with less emphasis on dynamically changing UIs. We propose utilizing shape ...displays in three different ways to mediate interaction: to facilitate by providing dynamic physical affordances through shape change, to restrict by guiding users with dynamic physical constraints, and to manipulate by actuating physical objects. We outline potential interaction techniques and introduce Dynamic Physical Affordances and Constraints with our inFORM system, built on top of a state-of-the-art shape display, which provides for variable stiffness rendering and real-time user input through direct touch and tangible interaction. A set of motivating examples demonstrates how dynamic affordances, constraints and object actuation can create novel interaction possibilities.
Tangible technologies and shared interfaces create new paradigms for mediating collaboration through dynamic, synchronous environments, where action is as important as speech for participating and ...contributing to the activity. However, interaction with shared interfaces has been shown to be inherently susceptible to peer interference, potentially hindering productive forms of collaborative learning. Making learners effectively engage in processes of argumentative co-construction of knowledge is challenging in such exploratory learning environments. This paper adapts the social modes dimension of Weinberger and Fischer’s (Computers and Education 46(1):71–95,
2006
) analytical framework (for argumentative co-construction of knowledge) to analyse episodes of interference, in the context of a shared tabletop interface, to better understand its effect on collaborative knowledge construction. Studies involved 43 students, aged 11–14 years, interacting in groups of three, with a tangible tabletop application to learn basic concepts of the behaviour of light. Contrary to the dominant perspective, our analysis suggests that interference in shared interfaces can be productive for learning, serving as a trigger for promoting argumentation and collective knowledge construction. Interference episodes led to both productive and counter-productive learning opportunities. They were resolved through quick consensus building, when students abandoned their own activity and accepted changes made by others; integration-oriented consensus building, where students reflected on and integrated what happened in the investigation; or conflict-oriented consensus building where students tried to undo others’ actions and rebuild previous configurations. Overall, interference resolved through integration-oriented consensus building was found to lead to productive learning interactions, while counter-productive situations were mostly characterised by interference resolved through conflict-oriented consensus building.
The physical form of technology and its relationship to the surrounding environment is an important factor in design; we argue that this is especially true in the design of reflective technology. We ...suggest environmental psychology theory as a tool for understanding this relationship and use it to propose design guidelines for tangible reflective technologies. As an example, we apply these guidelines to the design of domestic technology, inspiring the creation of
Data Souvenirs, a set of hardware sketches we have built that combine technology with the physical form of books. Additionally, we reflect on our own design process, discussing how the combination of environmental psychology theory and hardware design sketches can motivate novel tangible designs.
► Guidelines drawn from environmental psychology are useful design tools. ► Restorative environment theory motivates six reflective technology design guidelines. ► We describe Data Souvenirs, a set of hardware sketches that draw on the form of books. ► Environmental psychology theory and hardware sketches help motivate novel tangible designs.
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