Helen Neale

Designing storytelling technologies to encouraging collaboration between young children

We describe the iterative design of two collaborative storytelling technologies for young children, KidPad and the Klump. We focus on the idea of designing interfaces to subtly encourage collaboration so that children are invited to discover the added benefits of working together. This idea has been motivated by our experiences of using early versions of our technologies in schools in Sweden and the UK. We compare the approach of encouraging collaboration with other approaches to synchronizing shared interfaces. We describe how we have revised the technologies to encourage collaboration and to reflect design suggestions made by the children themselves.

Using ‘tangibles’ to promote novel forms of playful learning

Tangibles, in the form of physical artefacts that are electronically augmented and enhanced to trigger various digital events to happen, have the potential for providing innovative ways for children to play and learn, through novel forms of interacting and discovering. They offer, too, the scope for bringing playfulness back into learning. To this end, we designed an adventure game, where pairs of children have to discover as much as they can about a virtual imaginary creature called the Snark, through collaboratively interacting with a suite of tangibles. Underlying the design of the tangibles is a variety of transforms, which the children have to understand and reflect upon in order to make the Snark come alive and show itself in a variety of morphological and synaesthesic forms. The paper also reports on the findings of a study of the Snark game and discusses what it means to be engrossed in playful learning.

Classroom collaboration in the design of tangible interfaces for storytelling

We describe the design of tangible interfaces to the KidPad collaborative drawing tool. Our aims are to support the re-enactment of stories to audiences, and integration within real classroom environments. A six-month iterative design process, working with children and teachers in school, has produced the “magic carpet”, an interface that uses pressure mats and video-tracked and barcoded physical props to navigate a story in KidPad. Reflecting on this process, we propose four guidelines for the design of tangible interfaces for the classroom. (1) Use physical size and shysical props to encourage collaboration. (2) Be aware of how different interfaces emphasize different actions. (3) Be aware that superficial changes to the design can produce very different physical interactions. (4) Focus on open low-tech technologies rather than (over) polished products.

Applied virtual environments to support learning of social interaction skills in users with Asperger's Syndrome

Aspergers Syndrome (AS) is an autistic spectrum disorder characterised by normal to high IQ but with marked impairment in social skills. Successful social skills training appears to be best achieved either in situ or in role-play situations where users can explore different outcomes resulting from their social behaviour. Single user virtual environments (SVEs) provide an opportunity for users with AS to learn social interaction skills in a safe environment which they can visit as many times as they like.The use of game-like tasks can provide an incentive and can also be used to guide the user through progressive learning stages. Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) allow several users to interact simultaneously within the virtual environment, each taking different perspectives or role-play characters. Within the AS interactive project a series of SVEs and CVEs have been developed in collaboration with users and professional groups with an overall aim of supporting social skills learning. Initial evaluation studies have been carried out which have been used to both inform and refine the design of these virtual environments (VEs) as well as giving an insight into the understanding and interpretation of these technologies by users with AS.

Interfaces to support children's co-present collaboration: multiple mice and tangible technologies

This paper summarises two different approaches using technology to support young childrens collaborative interaction in a classroom setting. KidPad, a 2 1/2D drawing package with zooming capabilities, was adapted for use with multiple mice and tangible interfaces. The first section of the paper focuses on a study carried out to evaluate the effect of multiple mice on childrens collaborative behaviour at a desktop computer. Positive effects of the use of two mice included symmetry of mouse use amongst pairs and a greater degree of engagement in the task. However a number of usability issues were identified when children attempted to collaborate, particular problems were faced when the shared control was taken away, and one of the users took control, for example, when navigating. Different types of working styles were also evident between the one mouse and two mice conditions. The second section of the paper describes a move away from the desktop computer towards room-based technologies. Tangible interfaces to KidPad were developed in order to facilitate shared control over actions such as navigation where difficulties had been identified in a desktop situation. The visibility of action is highlighted as a fundamental element in the support of collaboration on a larger scale. Finally, future work and the potential of these technologies in encouraging shareable co-present interaction in a real school context are briefly discussed.

Structured Evaluation of Virtual Environments for Special-Needs Education

This paper describes the development of a structured approach to evaluate the experiential and communication virtual learning environments (VLEs) that were designed specifically for use in the education of children with severe learning difficulties at the Shepherd School in Nottingham. Constructivist learning theory was used as a basis for an evaluation framework and analysis method to evaluate the behavior of the participants as well as the quality of the design of three different VLEs. From an observational field study of student-teacher pairs using the VLEs, eighteen behavior categories were identified as relevant to five of seven constructivist principles (Jonassen, 1994). The analysis of student-teacher behavior was used to provide evidence for (or against) how the VLEs met the constructivist principles. Results of this structured evaluation indicate that the three VLEs meet the constructivist principles in very different ways. This paper concludes with recommendations for appropriate design modifications.

Theme-based content analysis

Virtual environment and multimedia technology are developing rapidly in many areas. These include visual complexity, the opportunity to provide multi-sensory input and output, affordability and a variety of system designs and applications. Involving the users in the design and development process can result in more appropriate and usable interfaces. In addition, an iterative evaluation throughout the process of technology development can result in a large amount of useful information being gathered from users. However, there can be problems with this?the data collection and analysis process can be time consuming; it can be difficult to report information back to the developers in a meaningful form, and thus the results of the evaluation may not get incorporated into interface design; and some evaluation techniques can be specific to the application (e.g. assessment of learning from an educational virtual environment application) or user group (e.g. people with learning disabilities).This paper presents an evaluation method that has been successfully used in virtual environment and multimedia evaluation at the Virtual Reality Applications Research Team (VIRART), and has overcome some of these problems. Theme-based content analysis (TBCA) is a qualitative method that provides useful, detailed information about user opinions or behaviour, and can also provide general indications of results in the user population by the grouping of data into meaningful categories. A number of different data collection methods can be used (e.g. short interview, open-ended questionnaire questions, observation) allowing the time and expertise of the virtual environment researcher to be most usefully employed, and the needs and abilities of the user population to be met. The analysis process is less time-consuming, and allows both summarization of the results and retention of the raw data. As described in the paper, this flexible method can be applied in a number of different circumstances, with a variety of different virtual reality technologies (desktop, projection or head mounted display (HMD) systems). In addition, the results from this method can be presented in a simple format to allow an easy feedback of user opinions and behaviours to virtual environment developers, providing contextual examples and an indication of the proportion of users experiencing usability problems. This facilitates a direct input of the evaluation data into the virtual environment development process.

The AS interactive project: single-user and collaborative virtual environments for people with high-functioning autistic spectrum disorders

The AS Interactive Project aimed to assess the potential of single-user and collaborative virtual environments to support learning and enhancing of social skills in people with autistic disorders on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum. The project had two distinct phases of research: Phase I focused mainly on development and design using user-centred principles. Phase II was concerned with implementation of design feedback, further improvements and evaluation studies of the virtual environments developed. This paper describes the research process, summarizes results of the project and briefly outlines plans for future research.