Andrea Rosales

Feetup: a playful accessory to practice social skills through free-play experiences

In this paper we describe the design process of an interactive accessory to play anywhere and anytime while encouraging free-play and practice social skills. We explain the design process, the resulting conceptual design of FeetUp and the preliminary users evaluation. FeetUp is a playful accessory that takes advantage of childrens interest to jump, or perform body stunts. These activities generally include lifting both feet, and FeetUp gives audiovisual feedback whenever this happens to encourage free-play related with jump activities. Preliminary users experience shows how FeetUp, encourages freeplay.

SOS: Orchestrating Collaborative Activities across Digital and Physical Spaces Using Wearable Signaling Devices

Carrying out collaborative learning activities (supported by technologies or not) typically involves the coordination of multiple participants, in their dynamic assignment to groups and roles and in the distribution of resources and tools to specific group or individuals. While the mechanisms required to address these coordination aspects in digital educational spaces have been largely studied, less research has been conducted on orchestration support for facilitating this coordination in (technology-enhanced) physical spaces, such as the classroom or the playground. This paper presents the Signal Orchestration System (SOS), a system that augments the physical environment with digital signals indicating orchestration aspects. The SOS facilitates its integration with digital educational spaces to allow transitioning activities from digital to physical spaces. The paper describes the SOS system and its underlying architecture through a functional prototype that has been developed to show its feasibility and to enable its evaluation in authentic situations. The main components of the prototype include a Manager, where orchestration visual and auditory signals are configured, changed on the fly and transmitted, and three different designs of Wearable Signaling Devices, which are carried by participants and render the orchestration signals. The prototype has been used in two different experiments in the context of a real course applying adaptations of the well-known Jigsaw collaborative learning flow pattern. The results show that the SOS enables a flexible dynamic orchestration of the collaborative activities.

Orchestration signals in the classroom: managing the Jigsaw collaborative learning flow

The orchestration of collaborative learning processes in face-to-face physical settings, such as classrooms, requires teachers to coordinate students indicating them who belong to each group, which collaboration areas are assigned to each group, and how they should distribute the resources or roles within the group. In this paper we present an Orchestration Signal system, composed of wearable Personal Signal devices and an Orchestration Signal manager. Teachers can configure color signals in the manager so that they are transmitted to the wearable devices to indicate different orchestration aspects. In particular, the paper describes how the system has been used to carry out a Jigsaw collaborative learning flow in a classroom where students received signals indicating which documents they should read, in which group they were and in which area of the classroom they were expected to collaborate. The evaluation results show that the proposed system facilitates a dynamic, visual and flexible orchestration.

On the Conceptualization, Design, and Evaluation of Appealing, Meaningful, and Playable Digital Games for Older People:

While older people tend to be regarded as actual, or potential, players of digital games within literature on game studies, human–computer interaction, and gerontechnology, they are also often considered nonavid users of digital technologies. This contradiction prompted us to conduct a literature review, which revealed (a) insufficient involvement of older people within the design of games targeted toward this group and (b) insufficient understanding of their everyday digital gameplay. In this article, we present the conceptualization, design, and evaluation of digital games that active older people found to be sufficiently appealing, playable, and meaningful. A 6-month ethnography of the play experiences of 170 older people helped us to conceptualize these games, which were codesigned through playful everyday activities. To facilitate the development of these games, we designed and evaluated an online game creation platform, which enabled 99 older people with different cultural backgrounds to create, play, and contribute to games.

Evocative Experiences in the Design of Objects to Encourage Free-Play

In the near future technologies will be even more present in every day objects, which should add a playful value for children, to make use of their natural interest to play while being socially and physically active. We have moved towards this direction by building on free-play experiences identified through a face-to-face ethnographical study conducted over 4 months. The study shows that, beyond the increase of screen based entertainment, children have scarce opportunities for free-play (leading to them being more sedentary). Moreover during free play, they combine the interest of an individual activity, with a personal challenge, while collaborating and competing. Based on these findings we propose augmenting accessories with sensor systems giving feedback while doing specific body challenges. We have developed and tested two prototypes based on this concept: shoes that blink while jumping and a fanny pack that blinks while moving.

On the evocative power and play value of a wearable movement-to-sound interaction accessory in the free-play of schoolchildren

This paper discusses the evocative power and play value of the Wearable Sounds Kit WSK, a movement-to-sound interaction accessory. Whilst movement-to-sound interaction is attracting growing research attention in HCI, very little of it has been conducted in the context of free-play with children. This paper presents a participatory design study of the WSK with 20 school-aged children 7--12 years old in a free-play scenario, and an evaluation of the WSK in a playground at Ars Electronica Festival with over 70 school-aged children. The evaluation addressed three research questions: can school-aged children incorporate the WSK into their free-play? What free-play patterns are encouraged by the WSK? Which design features of the WSK influence the free-play experience? By conducting qualitative and quantitative data gathering methods and analyses, which include first-hand observations and video-coding, this paper shows that school-aged children can effectively incorporate the WSK into their free-play, and that the accessory encourages different types of free-play. The results also show differences in the free-play mediated by the accessory depending on the age group and sex of the player, and these differences reinforce the play value of the WSK. Some implications for designing technologically-oriented playful toys are also discussed.

Collective creation of games using free play technologies

From the age of six children are developing important social skills, often through play. However, many children now spend most of their leisure time interacting through screens, rather than developing face-to-face social skills, which are also important for adult hood. Using augmented technologies to stimulate children in the collective creation of games could contribute to developing these social skills. Related work with augmented technologies for play does not take into consideration the evocative power of the objects to be augmented. We aim to identify objects, which are particularly evocative, and make them interactive through augmented technology. We will also draw on the basic rules of traditional folk games to create toys, which genuinely stimulate social skills. We present two early prototypes designed to investigate both the way in which children perceive feedback from different sensors and actuators and also their ability to construct their own games with those objects.

My Interests, My Activities: Learning from an Intergenerational Comparison of Smartwatch Use

We analyze smartwatch use from an intergenerational perspective to garner non-stereotypical reflections on ageing. The research questions are: (1) How do personal interests shape, and how are they shaped by, first-time use of a smartwatch? (2) To what extent do tracked data help in interpreting the relationship between the user and the device? We analyze two older and two middle-aged adults involved in a one-year case study, and combine log data and reported activities for richer empirical evidence. The older adults showed higher levels of smartwatch activity than the middle-aged. The key services they used were notifications and the pedometer. We found that smartwatch uses and forms of appropriation are as diverse as the four participants are and that the ways in which such watches are adopted are shaped by personal circumstances and interests. The tracked data helped to illustrate smartwatch uses, providing acceptably accurate pictures of activities. However, the low number of participants in the case study magnified the data’s limitations, which illustrate issues to be taken into account when working with tracked data – or big data in general.

Beeping Socks and Chirping Arm Bands: Wearables That Foster Free Play

Three playful wearable accessories incorporate design principles that promote individuality, natural interaction, ubiquity, and intimacy to encourage spontaneous open-ended social interaction in school-age children. The Web extra at https://youtu.be/LBBe8iDeFrs demonstrates Wearable Sound, an accessory that transforms your movements into sounds. You can play the sound of a bird by moving your arms, the sound of bubbles while walking, or create your personal combination. You only have to wear the sensor, choose a sound, and use all your creativity to play!

Co-designing with a community of older learners for over 10 years by moving user-driven participation from the margin to the centre

Abstract This paper addresses a gap in the Participatory Design (PD) literature, wherein more research on the long-term impact of design projects is warranted. This paper reflects on a 10-year study that intertwined ethnography and 2 PD projects in a community of older learners. Although the goal of our study was to design new digital technologies, the process of designing them presented us with opportunities that gave rise to new non-digital practices, which turned out to be the legacy and most significant outcomes of the PD projects. This result invited us to review the trajectory that led to these outcomes. Our analysis shows that the most important legacy aspect of the projects arose from unexpected forms of user—driven participation that we allowed to co-exist together with those practices more related to the design goals of the PD projects. Drawing upon our results, this paper posits that engagement with PD participants that unfolds over an extended period of time is instrumental in facilitating the development of participation, understanding more deeply long-lasting project outcomes, and legitimising forms of participation that are not directly related to project/design goals.