Allen Bevans

Futura: design for collaborative learning and game play on a multi-touch digital tabletop

This paper introduces a collaborative learning game called Futura: The Sustainable Futures Game, which is implemented on a custom multi-touch digital tabletop platform. The goal of the game is to work with other players to support a growing population as time passes while minimizing negative impact on the environment. The design-oriented research goal of the project is to explore the novel design space of collaborative, multi-touch tabletop games for learning. Our focus is on identifying and understanding key design factors of importance in creating opportunities for learning. We use four theoretical perspectives as lenses through which we conceptualize our design intentions and inform our analysis. These perspectives are: experiential learning, constructivist learning, collaborative learning, and game theory. In this paper we discuss design features that enable collaborative learning, present the results from two observational studies, and compare our findings to other guidelines in order to contribute to the growing body of empirically derived design guidelines for tangible, embodied and embedded interaction.

Springboard: Designing Image Schema Based Embodied Interaction for an Abstract Domain

In this paper, we describe the theoretical framing, design, and user study of a whole body interactive environment called Springboard. Springboard supports users to explore the concept of balance in the abstract domain of social justice through embodied interaction. We present the foundational theory of embodied conceptual metaphor, focusing on the twin-pan balance schema, which can be enacted spatially or physically. We describe how these enactments of the balance schema and the conceptual metaphor of balance in social justice can be used to design the interaction model for a whole body interactive environment. We present the results of our qualitative interview style user study with 45 participants. The study was conceived to explore how participants enact, perceive, and understand spatial, physical, and conceptual balance through whole body interaction with an abstract domain such as social justice. We conclude with a discussion of implications for whole body interaction design.

Balancing act: enabling public engagement with sustainability issues through a multi-touch tabletop collaborative game

Despite a long history of using participatory methods to enable public engagement with issues of societal importance, interactive displays have only recently been explored for this purpose. In this paper, we evaluate a tabletop game called Futura, which was designed to engage the public with issues of sustainability. Our design is grounded in prior research on public displays, serious games, and computer supported collaborative learning. We suggest that a role-based, persistent simulation style game implemented on a multi-touch tabletop affords unique opportunities for a walk-up-and-play style of public engagement. We report on a survey-based field study with 90 participants at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics (Canada). The study demonstrated that small groups of people can be immediately engaged, participate collaboratively, and can master basic awareness outcomes around sustainability issues. However, it is difficult to design feedback that disambiguates between individual and group actions, and shows the temporal trajectory of activity.

Balancing justice: comparing whole body and controller-based interaction for an abstract domain

In this paper, we present a quantitative, comparative study of a multimedia environment about social justice that users can control using whole body interaction or a simple control device. We explore the efficacy of using embodied metaphor-based whole body interaction compared to controller-based interaction for an abstract domain (social justice). We describe how conceptual metaphor theory can be applied to the design of a whole body interaction model, focusing on the twin-pan balance image schema and its metaphorical elaboration that structures the concept of balance in social justice. We describe the Springboard system, our methodology and results from a study with 76 participants. Our results indicate that participants were able to interact with our system using both input approaches. However, participants in the whole body group were more deeply impacted by their experiences related to social justice than those in the control device group.

Investigating the effects of bimanual multitouch interaction on creativity

Creativity is an important but difficult cognitive process to study. Recent findings from cognitive neuroscience suggest that inter-hemispheric interaction (the interaction of opposite brain hemispheres facilitated by the corpus callosum) is an important factor influencing creative output. We propose that bi-manual multitouch interaction may improve creative output because manipulating digital objects (an integral part of computer-supported creativity tasks) with two hands may facilitate inter-hemispheric interaction. This paper briefly describes the development of a computerized form of the Alternate Uses Task, a standardized creativity assessment tool, used in an exploratory study (n=65) investigating this theory.

StitchRV: multi-camera fiducial tracking

StitchRV is a fiducial and touch-tracking engine based on the popular reacTIVision fiducial tracking system. StitchRV combines video input from multiple cameras in real time, and can be customized for a wide range of hardware and fiducial tracking applications through the high-performace rapid prototyping environment openFrameworks. The multi-camera approach facilitated by StitchRV also allows greater diversity and flexibility than single-camera systems when designing computer vision based tangible and multitouch prototypes.

Creative design: exploring value propositions with urban nepalese children

Interactive technologies are being introduced into urban childrens lives in developing countries. It is critical that these children have an active voice in the process of developing such technologies. Towards these aims we describe the research goals, process and outcomes for an action research project. The overarching goal of the research is to investigate and better understand how edutainment-based interactive technologies might change or improve the lives of urban Nepalese children, their families and their communities. In this paper, we describe the preliminary phase of the research in which in which we design and run a creative design workshop with Nepalese children.

Supporting children's creativity through tangible user interfaces

We outline a preliminary research approach intended to explore the potential of tangible user interfaces (TUIs) in supporting childrens creative problem solving activities, specifically those requiring the generation of divergent solutions. Our approach is grounded in theoretical notions taken from psychology, neuroscience, and developmental cognition. We detail a TUI currently in development called the Invention Workbench, and summarize how theoretical considerations have shaped the design of the interface.